With Donald, she built an empire. Before breaking up. Then to continue on a career as a frenetic jet-setter. His life was a novel.
The bun is perfectly lacquered, down to the smallest strand of bleached hair, to ensure that nothing moves. The lips, painted red, match a gleaming blouse. Ivana or the perfect American… From her native Eastern Europe, she has retained the blonde hair of a doll and that rigid accent that makes her roll the “r”. Not really the height of chic on Fifth Avenue! It doesn’t matter, it’s the only thing she never wanted to wear makeup. She made it her trademark, just like her first name: this “Ivana” which sounded as pop star as “Madonna”, it amused her. We would have almost forgotten that she had a surname: Trump, that of the 45th president of the United States, elected on November 8, 2016. He was her husband from 1977 to 1992.
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On October 9, 2017, interviewed in “Good Morning America”, the most watched morning show in the country, the ex-Mrs. Trump boasts of having a direct telephone line with the Oval office: “I don’t want to call him often , because of Melania. I don’t want to create jealousy. But we agree: I am Trump’s first wife, so I am the real First Lady! She laughs, proud of the arrow shot in the direction of this too beautiful, too young rival, who only reminds her of the passing of time.
With Eric and Ivanka, in 1995.
© Abaca
First lady, Ivana Trump could have been. “I always told her that she shouldn’t have asked for a divorce,” explains her close friend, the jet-setter Massimo Gargia, who, every year, resides part of the fall at her home in Manhattan. “Men who cheat on their wives, he continues, it’s normal in this environment. But she couldn’t accept it. She was too puritanical for that. She said that something between them had broken. Despite everything, Mrs. Trump first of the name never really kept away from the real estate mogul. In 1995, three years after their divorce, they shot an advertisement together for the Pizza Hut restaurant chain. Hand in hand, as if nothing had happened. Once installed in the White House, Donald Trump continues to seek advice from this intractable businesswoman, more self-made-man than him, without whom he would not have built his immense empire.
On July 14, the former president himself announced the death of his 73-year-old ex-wife: “I am very sad to announce to all those who loved her, and there were many of them, that Ivana Trump died at her home in New York,” he wrote. Found unconscious by the police, who had been alerted by a call to the emergency number 911, she would have succumbed to “torso injuries caused by an impact”. The criminal trail has been ruled out: everything suggests that she would have fallen down the stairs.
In his little Versailles in the Trump Tower, four-poster beds rub shoulders with leopard prints
A little too ordinary epilogue for this extraordinary destiny – “bigger than life”, as the Americans say – which one would think was written by the screenwriters of “Dallas” or “Dynasty”. “My life is more hectic than the most hectic of adventure novels,” she joked to Henry-Jean Servat, who interviewed her for Paris Match in 1994. “Poor Ivana! Money never made her happy,” laments Amanda Lear, who met her at many parties on the Riviera.
From her native Czechoslovakia, little Ivana Zelnickova was already rocking the American dream. How to escape Gottwaldov, this industrial city that reeks of sulfur and soot? An only child, she is admired by her father, a communist officer, who predicts a glorious future for her as an Olympic skier. From the age of 6, Ivana hurtles down the black slopes: “Going down the mountain on two pieces of wood, it teaches you to rely only on yourself”, she will congratulate herself later. As a teenager, this 1.82 meter liana was distinguished by her fabulous physique and joined the national team. Rather than offering medals to the Soviet bloc, she flew west. Another gold rush. To obtain a passport, she marries one of her fellow skiers, an Austrian who wants to make a new start in Canada. But once in Montreal, in the early 1970s, Ivana asked for the dissolution of her union and went to the United States. In the land of Marilyn Monroe, she will not be an actress, but a model.
Surrounded by her three children, Donald Jr. (left), Ivanka and Eric, in 2011 in New York.
© Ben Hider / Getty Images
She is 27 years old, with endless legs, and all the men at her feet, Wall Street bankers or wealthy heirs. One of them will succeed in making her forget all the others… One evening in 1976, at Maxwell’s Plum, a chic restaurant on First Avenue frequented by New Yorkers, Ivana and a few friends are waiting to get a table. A man, playboy style from a good family, blond locks, square jaw, approaches her: “I am Donald Trump. I can help you,” he whispers in her ear. Ivana then turns to her friends: “The good news is that we will have a table very quickly. The bad news is that this guy is going to sit with us. The property developer, budding tycoon, does more than that: he pays the bill, drives Ivana home in his silver Cadillac, sends her roses the next day, and, a few weeks later, proposes her.
The Trumps therefore form a power duo. They have three children (Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric), an indispensable showcase of their family happiness, and build their kingdom brick by brick. “We shared the same ambition,” Ivana later wrote. This antithesis of the desperate housewife works tirelessly, single-handedly managing the Grand Hyatt Hotel and the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. She gets up early and goes to bed late, because, unlike “The Donald”, she loves social events and skimming the nightclubs.
With her last husband, Italian actor and model Rossano Rubicondi, in 2005. Married in 2008, they divorced a year later
© ASLAN-MACAULT / BESTIMAGE
Her businessman husband appoints her vice-president of the decoration department of the Trump Organization. So Ivana improvises herself as a new Charles Le Brun, with less certain taste. She transforms the apartments of the Trump Tower into a little rococo Versailles, where crystal chandeliers and four-poster beds stand alongside leopard prints and marble chests of drawers. “This is how Louis XVI would have lived if he had had the money,” she comments in front of the cameras. She would have dreamed of being Lady Di and, yet, masters the media tricks much better than the Princess of Wales. In her rhinestone dresses, she gives journalists what they crave: dripping m’as-tu-vu and outspokenness that can blacken pages and pages of tabloids. Her press attachés even distribute folders listing the Empress of Manhattan’s best quotes.
Amanda Lear: “Last time, she was very beat up. I think she had a drinking problem.
But, at the end of the 1980s, bankruptcy awaited the Trump empire. Madame tries to replenish the coffers and keep up appearances, while Monsieur plays with his state-of-the-art helicopter and flirts with candidates for the title of Miss America. Ivana pretends not to see anything, too busy launching a perfume in her name or a new jewelry collection. Until this Christmas Eve 1989, in Aspen, when Marla Maples, pseudo-actress and Donald’s official mistress, arrives in the mountain restaurant where everyone is having a family Christmas Eve. “I love your husband. And you? launches the favorite to the official. “Ivana got up, skied home, took the first plane to New York and immediately filed for divorce,” says Massimo Gargia.
Collapsed, Ivana? It would be bad to know her. Provident, she had renegotiated her nuptial contract several times, until receiving, at the time of the divorce, 25 million dollars, a property with 46 rooms in Connecticut, an apartment in Trump Plaza and a pension of more than 650,000 dollars per year. year for the education of the three children, of whom she obtains sole custody.
Eric Trump in front of his mother’s apartment, of which he has just learned of the death, in New York, on July 14.
© Ordonez Elder/Splash News/ABACA
The separation turns into a media soap opera: Ivana sees it as a new way to align the tickets. In 1992, she published a novel, “Rien que l’amour”, inspired by her own story and for which Donald Trump sued her. She continues the bestsellers: “Free to Love” (1993), “The Best Is Yet to Come” (1995), and “Raising Trump” (2017), in which she recounts her role as matriarch. She distils her advice as a divorced woman in a letter from the heart published in the magazine “Globe”, in radio chronicles, in conferences for which she charges 20,000 dollars an hour, or in a film, “Le club des ex (1996), where, facing Diane Keaton and Bette Midler, abandoned by their husbands, she preaches: “Don’t go crazy, grab everything!”
Deep down, is Ivana really disillusioned? “The only men likely to interest me are either in prison, or homosexual, or married,” she quips. However, in 1995, she marries in third marriage with an Italian billionaire, Riccardo Mazzucchelli. The union will only last two years: Ivana is too eager to have fun. In Palm Beach or Saint Tropez, she coos with muscular Adonis, younger than her sons. “I prefer to play babysitters rather than nurses,” she replies to those who dare to criticize her.
Triumphant, always. Ivana Trump on Madison Avenue, May 3.
© Abaca
His makeover is the glitter of reality TV. Like her ex-husband, who has long hosted the program “The Apprentice”, Ivana takes part in several shows, including “Celebrity Big Brother” – a British “Loft Story” – and “The island of celebrities”, a nicely ole Italian show ole. In 2018, she waddles on RAI 1 in the transalpine “Dance with the Stars”, on the arm of Rossano Rubicondi, her fourth and last husband. Even if she separates from him only a year after having said yes to him, she accompanies him in the disease which ends up prevailing in October 2021, at the age of 49. Ivana Trump always remains faithful in friendship to the men she loved.
“Rossano’s death upset her, reveals Massimo Gargia. She did not want to leave her house and was depressed. “The last time I saw her, she was very messed up, adds Amanda Lear. I think she had a problem with drinking…” In the past fortnight, according to those around her, Ivana had found a smile. She was looking forward to returning to Saint-Tropez, where she spent all her summers. “I spoke to her on the phone the day before her accident, she couldn’t wait for us to have dinner together, regrets Massimo Gargia. She had just gone to the hairdresser and had to take the plane to Nice. Ivana Trump did not have time to review her Mediterranean paradise. So decided his incredible destiny.