Ivan Trumpthe first former president donald trumpHis three wives and the mother of his three eldest children died Thursday at the age of 73.
Confirming his ex-wife’s death in a post on his platform Truth Social, Mr Trump wrote: “I am very saddened to inform all those who loved her, of which there are many, that Ivana Trump has passed away at her home in New York City died”.
The former president described her as “a wonderful, beautiful and amazing woman who lived an amazing and inspiring life” and said her “pride and joy” were the three children she had with the former real estate mogul: Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump.
“She was as proud of her as we were all so proud of her,” he wrote. “Rest in peace, Ivana!”
In a statement, Ms. Trump’s children announced the death of their “beloved mother” with “deep sadness.”
“Our mother was an incredible woman — a force in business, a world-class athlete, a radiant beauty, and a caring mother and friend,” they wrote, adding that she was “a survivor” who “fleed Communism and embraced this country”.
“She taught her children courage and toughness, compassion and determination. She will be greatly missed by her mother, three children and ten grandchildren,” they wrote.
Born Ivana Zelníčková in 1949 in what was then Czechoslovakia, she left the then-communist country in 1971 after marrying an Austrian ski instructor, whom she divorced a year later after gaining Austrian citizenship, and eventually set out on the Moved to California, then to New York, where she lived and earned a living as a model.
She met the future president in New York City in 1976, and the couple married in April 1977. Their first child, Donald Trump Jr., was born just over eight months later. Their daughter, whose full name is also Ivana Trump (Ivanka is a diminutive of the name, literally “little Ivana”), was born in 1981, and their third child, Eric Trump, followed three years later.
The couple were mainstays of New York popular culture in the 1980s, but they divorced by the end of the decade after his affair with his future second wife – Marla Maples – became public. The divorce was controversial and provided headline fodder for months. During the divorce proceedings, Ms. Trump testified on her husband’s affidavit of rape. She later told the author of a book about her husband that she “felt hurt” by her ex-husband, but a statement from Mr Trump’s lawyers said she did not want her words to be “literally or criminally interpreted”.
Corresponding The New York Times, The 1992 divorce settlement between Ivanka and Donald Trump granted her a $14 million payment, a mansion in Connecticut, an apartment in the Upper East Side Co-op known as Trump Plaza, and a month a year in Mr .Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Ms. Trump married and divorced twice more — in 1995, to an Italian businessman whom she divorced two years later, and in 2008, to an Italian actor more than two decades her junior, in a ceremony in Mar-a -Lago her former sister-in-law, then-Third Circuit Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, presided. This marriage ended less than a year later.
However, she remained friends with her first husband. According to that New York Post, She claimed to have spoken to him “before and after” his campaign appearances. She told later post that her ex-husband offered her the post of ambassador to the Czech Republic after becoming President, but she declined. And in 2017, she told ABC News in an interview that she spoke to the then-president every two weeks and had a “direct number” for him at the White House.
She told ABC she “didn’t really want to call” her husband there because his third wife, Melanie TrumpShe lived there too.
“I don’t want to incite any kind of jealousy or anything because I’m basically Trump’s first wife,” she said. “I am First Lady”.
