Ivana Trump

The most consequential marriage of Ivana Trump’s life was not the one that made her famous — it was the first one, a union her own lawyer later called a “Cold War marriage.” Her first husband, Alfred Winklmayr, was a fellow athlete and an Austrian ski instructor and friend; according to her lawyer, the couple did not marry for love but to free her from her native Czechoslovakia, and the lawyer confirmed they never lived together or even consummated the marriage (Associated Press via The Economic Times). The arrangement worked as designed: after she obtained her Austrian passport in 1972, she dissolved the marriage the following year, and the BBC noted that it allowed her to leave Communist Czechoslovakia without defecting (BBC News via News.az). Donald Trump, the outlet added dryly, was her second husband.

She was born Ivana Marie Zelnickova on February 20, 1949, in Gottwaldov, Czechoslovakia — the town where she grew up near Prague, now known as Zlín in the Czech Republic (Associated Press via Times of India). Much of her youth was spent in competitive skiing for the Czechoslovakian national system, and she later competed for Charles University in Prague, where she earned a master’s degree in physical education and languages, according to the biography posted by CMG Worldwide, the celebrity business agency that represented her (Associated Press via Times of India). One claim about her skiing career did not survive scrutiny: reports that she was an alternate on the 1972 Winter Olympics team were refuted in 1989 by a local Olympic official, the BBC reported (BBC News via News.az). After university she followed her then-love-interest, professional skier George Syrovatka, to Canada, and later modeled for the Audrey Morris agency in Montreal (Associated Press via Times of India).

It was on a 1976 modeling trip to New York City that she met Donald Trump, and they married nine months later (Associated Press via Times of India). The court record in their later divorce case dates the wedding precisely: April 9, 1977 (Trump v. Trump, 179 A.D.2d 201). During the 1980s the couple became one of New York City’s most prominent power couples, and while Donald Trump took the public credit for breaking into the competitive Manhattan real estate market, Ivana filled an important role in the family business soon after the marriage, the New York Times reported (Associated Press via Times of India). She worked alongside him developing Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue and the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in Atlantic City, served as vice president for interior design at the Trump Organization, and managed the historic Plaza Hotel, which Trump acquired in 1988 — all while raising their three children (Associated Press via Times of India).

The marriage ended after Donald Trump’s highly publicized affair with Marla Maples, whom he later married, and the divorce became tabloid fodder (Associated Press via Times of India). The AP’s Economic Times piece dates the split to four years after their son Eric’s birth. Here the standard obituary shorthand gets the year wrong: wire obituaries say the couple “married in 1977 and divorced in 1992,” but the court record shows the IAS court granted the wife a judgment of divorce on December 12, 1990, on the ground of cruel and inhuman treatment (Trump v. Trump, 179 A.D.2d 201). (The 1992 figure likely comes from the April 16, 1992 appellate decision in the case, which dealt with the settlement’s confidentiality clause rather than the divorce itself.) A New York judge cited “cruel and inhuman treatment” by Donald Trump in granting her request for divorce (Associated Press via Times of India).

The financial unwinding took another year. The couple had entered a post-nuptial agreement on December 24, 1987 — superseding three earlier agreements — which provided for $350,000 a year in maintenance and a $10 million lump sum within 90 days of a divorce decree; on March 22, 1991, the parties entered a stipulation of settlement, with Ivana’s acceptance of a $10 million check constituting irrevocable acceptance of its terms, and a supplemental judgment followed on May 22, 1991 (Trump v. Trump, 179 A.D.2d 201). The agreement also contained a confidentiality provision barring her from publishing any diary, memoir, or account of the marriage without his written consent in advance (Trump v. Trump, 179 A.D.2d 201). What she ultimately walked away with was reported by the New York Times as $14 million plus $650,000 a year to support their three children, a 45-room mansion in Connecticut, an apartment in Trump Plaza, and use of the Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida for one month a year (Associated Press via Times of India).

She married twice more. In 1991 she met Riccardo Mazzucchelli, an Italian entrepreneur; she turned down his proposal at first, accepted three years later, married him in 1995, and divorced him after 20 months (Associated Press via The Economic Times). She later sued him for $15 million for breaching a confidentiality agreement; the suit was settled out of court, and Mazzucchelli died in 2017 (Associated Press via The Economic Times). In 2008 she married actor Rossano Rubicondi; that marriage ended the following year, though the couple remained on and off for a decade and appeared as contestants on a 2018 reality show, Dancing with the Stars (Associated Press via The Economic Times). They split again in 2019, and after Rubicondi died in 2021 at 49 of cancer, she was devastated — reports said she had cared for him to the very end (Associated Press via The Economic Times).

After the Trump separation she built her own commercial identity, launching lines of beauty products, clothing, and jewelry (BBC News via News.az). She had a cameo in the 1996 film The First Wives Club, advising three women whose husbands had left them for younger women: “Don’t get mad. Get everything” (Associated Press via Times of India). In her 2017 memoir Raising Trump, she took credit for raising the couple’s three children — Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump — writing that she “made the decisions about their education, activities, travel, child care, and allowances” until college, and said her relationship with Donald Trump had improved since the divorce to the point that she spoke to him about once a week (BBC News via News.az). Whatever their differences, she supported his 2016 run for the White House and told interviewers she periodically offered him advice (Associated Press via Times of India). In 2017 she told CBS television that Trump had offered her the ambassadorship to the Czech Republic and that she had turned it down (Associated Press via Times of India).

Ivana Trump died on July 14, 2022, at her home in New York City; her former husband announced it on Truth Social, writing, “I am very saddened to inform all of those that loved her, of which there are many, that Ivana Trump has passed away at her home in New York City” (Associated Press via Times of India). Neither the family statement nor his post mentioned a cause of death, but a police spokesperson said she was found dead on the stairs inside her apartment and that foul play was not suspected; the New York Times, citing unnamed law enforcement officials, said the death appeared accidental and that she may have fallen down the stairs (Associated Press via Times of India). The family’s statement lauded her as “a force in business, a world-class athlete, a radiant beauty, and caring mother and friend,” adding: “Ivana Trump was a survivor. She fled from communism and embraced this country. She taught her children about grit and toughness, compassion and determination” (BBC News via News.az). The family statement said she was survived by her mother, her three children, and 10 grandchildren (Associated Press via Times of India).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not repeat the frequently published claim that Ivana Trump was an alternate on the 1972 Winter Olympics team as fact — the BBC reported that a local Olympic official refuted it in 1989, and no fully-read source verifies the alternate claim. It does not give 1992 as the divorce year; the court record shows the divorce judgment was granted on December 12, 1990, and the profile explains why obituaries say 1992. It does not state an exact cause of death beyond what contemporaneous reporting confirmed (found on the stairs, no foul play suspected, appeared accidental), because the medical examiner’s own formal finding was not fully read. It does not name her parents or detail her mother’s later life, and it does not reconcile the court-record $10 million 1991 settlement check with the $14 million final figure reported by the New York Times — that gap is listed as an open item.