The Czech-born businesswoman married Trump in 1977 and was the mother of his three eldest children, Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric. The couple divorced in 1992 in a multimillion-dollar settlement that attracted huge tabloid attention.
“She was a wonderful, beautiful, and amazing woman, who led a great and inspirational life,” Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social. “Her pride and joy were her three children, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric. She was so proud of them, as we were all so proud of her.”
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Reports suggest that the cause of Ivana’s death may be accidental. Two people familiar with the situation told The Associated Press that she “was found unconscious near a staircase in the home” and police are investigating whether she fell down the stairs. “The medical examiner’s office will determine an official cause of death,” added the news agency.
Early life
Ivana Trump, nee Zelnickova, was born on 20 February 1949 in Zlin, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) and attended the prestigious Charles University in Prague.
She was an avid skiing enthusiast, partaking in the sport from an early age. Numerous reports said Ivana was competitive and part of at least one Czech Olympic skiing team, although the Czechoslovakian Olympic Committee denied these claims in 1989.
The high-profile marriage
After a brief failed marriage to a real estate agent, Ivana moved to Canada, became a model and met Trump while in New York. They married in 1977 and became one of the city’s most high-profile couples. Ivana was credited with coining his nickname, “The Donald”.
Ivana and Trump also forged a working partnership, with her status as a model and socialite no obstacle to her being hands-on in the business. A Vanity Fair article from 1990 said: “Ivana had been given the responsibility of supervising all the decoration [in Trump’s hotels]; she was hard at it, despite the fact that she was wearing a white wool Thierry Mugler jumpsuit and pale Dior shoes as she picked her way through the sawdust.”
Donald and Ivana Trump at the Costume Institute Gala in New York City on 9 December 1985
(Image credit: Tom Gates/Archive Photos/Getty Images)
Post-Donald
Ivana’s life didn’t slow down after her relationship ended with Trump – a split fuelled by his affair with Marla Maples, who became his second wife.
She wrote advice columns, launched her own lifestyle magazine and even had a cameo in the 1996 comedy-romance film The First Wives Club, where she had the line: “Ladies you have to be strong and independent. And remember: don’t get mad, get everything.”
In the late 1990s, she bought a large share in Croatia’s second-largest daily newspaper, wrote novels and set up her own fashion, beauty and jewellery lines. In 2010, she took part in the seventh series of Celebrity Big Brother in the UK, alongside Alex Reid and Dane Bowers.
After Trump, Ivana had two more marriages and two more divorces, to Italian businessman Riccardo Mazzucchelli and Italian model Rossano Rubicondi.
The Pizza Hut advert
Ivana had another strange claim to fame: she and the former president introduced the world to Pizza Hut’s stuffed crust pizza.
In 1995, the divorcees appeared in an advert for the fast food chain. “Do you really think this is the right thing for us? It’s wrong, isn’t it?” asked Trump. “But it feels so right,” responded Ivana.
“Viewers must have thought they were about to see the beginning of a torrid affair, the reigniting of a tabloid marriage,” said Adweek in 2016. ”But no, the couple proceeds to pop open a Pizza Hut box and dig into a stuffed-crust pizza. (Part of the joke – now lost in the fog of branding’s past – was that stuffed crust encouraged consumers to eat pizza the ‘wrong way’, meaning crust first.)”
They even cracked a divorce gag, with Trump telling his ex-wife that she was only “entitled to half” of the last slice.
“Whether it was the cheesy TV spot or just the cheese-stuffed crust, the ad was a smash hit,” said Adweek, helping push the chain’s sales up by $300m by the end of the year.
No regrets
In 1987, when Trump was asked about running for public office and Ivana about being a prospective first lady, she told the Palm Beach Post: “I wouldn’t like it. I treasure the family privacy too much.”
But when questioned whether her husband could become president, she added: “I never say never. He is 41 now. Who can say in ten years what he will do?”
By 2016, she seemed confident that he would become US president. Asked if she was also going to vote for her ex-husband, she told reporters: “Yes, of course I’m going to vote for him. He’s going to run the country as a business. He’s going to negotiate and he knows how to make decisions.”
In 2018, she made headlines for saying that Trump should only remain in the White House for one term. “He has a good life and he has everything. Donald is going to be 74, 73 for the next [election] and maybe he should just go and play golf and enjoy his fortune,” she told the New York Post.
Jet-setting life
More recently, Ivana spent time travelling between Miami, New York and the south of France, and she enjoyed being “Ivana-ma” and “Glam-ma” to her nine grandchildren.
“I’m not dating,” she told the New York Post in 2018. “I have companions. They’re based all around the world.”
She said she spoke to Trump once a month and he even offered her the role of US ambassador to the Czech Republic, but she turned him down as it would interfere with her jet-setting lifestyle.
“My ex said, ‘Ivana, if you want it, I give it to you,’” she said. “It’s four years in Prague, so bye-bye to Miami, bye-bye to New York in spring and fall, bye-bye to Saint-Tropez in summer.”
Donald and Ivana Trump when they were a married couple in the kitchen of their home in 1987
(Image credit: Joe McNally/Getty Images)
Spilling the beans
In October 2017, Ivana published a book focusing on her three children with the then president: Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric.
Raising Trump also reflected on her childhood in Czechoslovakia, her escape from the communist regime, her whirlwind romance in New York and her career in business.
Ivana said she was sharing “unfiltered personal stories about Don, Eric and Ivanka from their early childhood to becoming the ‘first sons and daughter’”.
Her book made it “inadvertently clear” why Ivana and Trump once “got along so well”, said Slate’s review. “Together, we made three children who have the best of both of us,” she wrote. “And, as I’ve always said, if you can’t be the best, don’t bother.”
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