Ivana Trump, the glamorous Czech-American businesswoman whose high-profile marriage to Donald J. Trump in the 1980s made them one of New York’s quintessential power couples of the time, died Thursday at her Manhattan home. She was 73.
Mr Trump announced her death in a statement to Truth Social, the conservative social media platform he founded. No other details were provided.
“I am deeply saddened to inform all those who loved her, and there are many, that Ivana Trump has passed away at her home in New York City,” he wrote. “She was an amazing, beautiful and wonderful woman who lived an amazing and inspiring life. 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. Rest in peace, Ivana!”
New York City police are investigating whether Mrs. Trump fell down the stairs at her home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, just off Fifth Avenue near Central Park, according to two law enforcement officers with knowledge of the case. One of the officials said there was no sign of a break-in at the house and the death appeared to be an accident. A spokeswoman for the city’s chief medical examiner said the office would investigate the death.
Mrs. Trump had received almost as much media attention as her husband and together they helped define the 1980s as an era of ostentatious excess among the social elite, an image Mr. Trump used to nurture his turn as an outsized television personality before his 2016 run to the White House.
While Mr. Trump often bragged about his exceptional business prowess, Ms. Trump played a vital role in building his real estate empire, which began shortly after their marriage in 1977.
Often described as obsessed with details and a workaholic, she collaborated with her husband on several of his early signature projects, such as the development of Trump Tower in Manhattan and the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, NJ.
She was the vice president of interior design for his company, the Trump Organization, and managed one of its most prized properties, the Plaza Hotel, while raising their three children, Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka.
The couple’s 1990 divorce, triggered in part by Trump’s affair with Marla Maples, whom he later married, generated tabloid fodder for weeks. In a statement, Ms. Trump accused Mr. Trump of raping her, though she later said she did not mean the word literally.
The divorce turned Ms. Trump into something of a heroine for rejected women everywhere — she even had a cameo in the 1996 film “The First Wives Club,” where she tells a group of disgruntled divorcees, “Don’t get mad, get anything!”
She also used her business prowess with great success. She developed lines of clothing, jewelry and beauty products, which she promoted through outlets such as the Home Shopping Network and QVC. She has invested in real estate, domestically and in Europe, and has written several books, including “The Best Is Yet to Come: Coping With Divorce and Enjoying Life Again” (1995) and, most recently, “Raising Trump” (2017). , a memoir of her marriage to Mr. Trump.
Ivana Marie Zelnickova was born on February 20, 1949 in Zlin, Czechoslovakia. Her father, Miloš Zelnícek, was an electrical engineer and her mother, Marie (Francova) Zelnickova, was a telephone operator.
An athletically gifted child, Ivana was particularly adept at skiing and competed with the Czech junior team, an experience that allowed her to see at least part of the world outside her small town.
She attended Charles University in Prague and obtained a master’s degree in physical education in 1972.
She was briefly married to Alfred Winklmayr, an Austrian ski instructor, in what she later called a “Cold War marriage,” which allowed her to get an Austrian passport and move to Canada. They never lived together, she said, and the marriage was “dissolved” in 1973.
In Canada, she worked as a ski instructor and model promoting the 1976 Montreal Olympics. While working at a reception in New York, she met 29-year-old Mr. Trump, who was just beginning to plan his ascent to the top of the Manhattan real estate world.
The two married nine months later in a ceremony led by Norman Vincent Peale, the author and Protestant religious figure.
Mr. Trump’s first major project was the redevelopment of the aging Commodore Hotel, adjacent to Grand Central Terminal in Midtown Manhattan. Ms. Trump, then working on her interior design license, jumped beside him, first overseeing plumbers and electricians and later, towards the end, judging “every pillow, every table and chair, and every brass column,” she told Vanity. Fair in 1988.
The hotel reopened in 1980 as the Grand Hyatt, a glitzy marker of a new decade of rapid development and material excess, qualities that would become synonymous with the Trump brand.
Mrs. Trump quickly became an equal, albeit behind the scenes, partner in Mr. Trump’s affairs. She emphasized opulence: it was she who chose the pink marble and shiny copper of Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue. While she insisted that her husband was in charge, it was also clear that she was one of his closest confidants, advising him, for example, on his decision to enter the casino business in Atlantic City.
She had even more power over the growing Trump household. In the introduction to “Raising Trump,” she bragged about Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric and didn’t mince words about who did what in their upbringing.
“I believe the credit for raising such wonderful children belongs to me,” she wrote. “I was responsible for raising our children before our divorce, and I had full custody of them after the split. I made the decisions about their education, activities, travel, childcare and benefits. When everyone had finished studying, I said to my ex-husband, ‘Here’s the finished product. Now it’s your turn.'”
The couple used their wealth to conquer New York’s social scene, but projected themselves far beyond it, into Americans’ TVs and reading material far from the skyscrapers of Midtown. They became fodder for gossip columns, People magazine profiles and even “Saturday Night Live” sketches.
And while the couple was riding high in the late 1980s, with a fortune estimated at $3 billion, she timidly slammed speculation about an impending flight to the White House by her husband.
“It’s not for the next ten years, certainly not,” she told Vanity Fair in 1988. “There’s so much to do. We’ve invested nearly a billion dollars in this city. We can’t put it in escrow and go to the White House. Go home. It would go down the drain in an instant. It’s too young, too new. But in ten years Donald will only be fifty-one–a young man.”
A full obituary will be published shortly.
Maggie Haberman, Andy Newman and William K. Rashbaum reported.