Marlene Wagman-Geller

Jan 23, 2026 by Marlene Wagman-Geller

 

“Looking good is the best revenge.” –Ivana Trump

 

The story of how Ivana Marie ZelníÄková slipped through the Iron Curtain and ascended the pinnacle of the American hierarchy is the stuff of which a Grimm’s brothers’ tales could have been made. The differences between Ivana and her storybook counterparts are instead of a castle she lived in a tower, and her prince had a wandering eye. 

 

Cut from the mold as a heroine from the novels of Joan Collins, Ivana grew up as an only child in Gottwaldov, (renamed Zlin), Czechoslovakia. Her father, Milos, was an electrical engineer at a power plant; her mother, Marie, worked as a telephone operator. At age four, Milos taught her to ski in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. At Prague’s Charles University, Ivana received a master’s degree in physical education. Entranced with actress Brigitte Bardot, Ivana dyed her hair light blonde. 

 

At age fourteen, Ivana met the competitive Czech skier, George Syrovatka; together they ventured beyond the borders of their communist country. On one of Western world ski competitions, she could have defected, but that would have meant never seeing her parents again and possibly placing them in danger. 

 

 In a “Cold War marriage,” she wed her friend Alfred Winklmayr, an Austrian ski instructor who gave her the prized possession of a passport to the Free World. She claimed she never consummated her union. Her heart lay with Czechoslovakian poet JiÅ™í Štaidl who died while driving under the influence. A newspaper reported his passenger–identified only as I.Z, emerged unharmed. Deeply shaken, along with her black poodle Chappy, Ivana headed to Montreal, Canada. By day, she worked as a ski instructor for George, who had defected from Czechoslovakia, and she spent nights at McGill University improving her English. For a time, she stayed in Toronto with her aunt and uncle. They treated her to a Caribbean cruise where, for a costume party, Ivana dressed as a Playboy bunny. She later trilled, “I won first prize!”

 

As a Canadian model, she left to New York on a promotion campaign for the Montreal Olympics. Along with fellow models, she visited the restaurant/bar, Maxwell’s Plum. The bevy of beauties caught the eye of the twenty-nine-year-old Donald Trump, who zeroed in on the blonde bombshell with the red mini-dress. When Donald placed his hand on her arm, she was about to give him “the commie death scare,” but desisted as he picked up the models’ $400 dinner tab.

 

Dating Donald opened a vista into a world of wonder. She revealed, “I came here and I saw the houses, the cars, the bananas and the strawberries in winter,” she recalled, “and I knew what I wanted. With Donald, I found them. I may be blonde, but I’m not stupid.” On the Oprah Winfrey Show she gushed, “I love a good-looking man, but you know it’s really with the look and the brain and the energy and the really potentials, and, you know, Donald always had a great head on his shoulders, and I saw the potential there.” The tycoon remarked, “She speaks a little lousy, but she’s gorgeous and I’m going to marry her.”

 

In her memoir, Raising Trump, Ivana wrote that during their dating days, Donald rented a ski chalet in Aspen, Colorado. She recalled, “It was a very sexy chalet. I know Donald had picked it for my benefit. I’m a realist, but I have a strong romantic streak and can see the moon and the stars. Donald wouldn’t see the moon if it were sitting on his chest.” Regardless of whether Donald could see the firmament, he could foresee the financial repercussions of a divorce. He gifted Ivana a three-carat Tiffany diamond ring. Before their walk–no doubt Ivana floated–down the aisle, Donald’s attorney, the notorious Roy Cohn, had drawn up four prenup contracts. They married in 1977 in Marble Collegiate Church in a ceremony presided over by the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, the author of The Power of Positive Thinking.

 

The 1980s non-celluloid Gordon Gekko was-The Donald,” a moniker Ivana gave her husband. With her flamboyance and his finances, the Trumps became media magnets. Although they had reached the pinnacle of Manhattan society via divergent roads, they shared common ground in their relentless pursuit of fame and fortune. Ivana boasted that, “In fifty years, we will be the Rockefellers.”

 

The mogul’s model wife appeared in the leading publications in her signature style of lacquered, blonde bouffant whose conversations were peppered with her term of endearment, “Dahling.” Ivana felt furs were fabulous and her mammoth-sized closets held chinchilla coats, sable jackets, and Dynasty-worthy shoulder padded outfits. During a Christmas vacation, she called designer Dennis Basso and told him that she was in Aspen and wanted a red sheared mink suit. The designer warned her that if she fell the mink would get wet and would not be a good look or scent. Ivana responded, “Dahling. I don’t fall.”

 

 The Trumps owned many splendored properties, their main residence was their Manhattan skyscraper, Trump Towers, a three-story, fifty-three room penthouse that included his-and-her bathrooms: Donald’s décor was dark brown marble; Ivana’s was translucent pink onyx. Toilet held gold-covered seats.

 

The Trumps’ crown jewel was their Palm Beach, 115-room Winter Palace, Mar-a-Logo. The former owner, Marjorie Meriweather Post, heiress to the cereal fortune, had named it after Spanish for sea and lake, as the storied address stood between the Atlantic Ocean and a lake. Whenever the couple increased their real estate portfolio, Ivana oversaw its interior decorating, her variation of Barbie’s playhouse.

 

Not content to be a mere Housewife of Manhattan, Ivana kept her lacquered finger in her husband’s pies. By 1988, she was the CEO of the Trump Plaza casino in Atlantic City where she held her own in the male dominated financial world. She commuted to the casino in a black helicopter with the word “IVANA” printed in white across its door. She also was a one-of-a-kind executive, as illustrated when she summoned the head of the Trump administration, Richard Wilhelm, “Where’s the Dick? I need the Dick now!” After the Donald bought New York City’s Plaza Hotel for more than $400 million, he appointed his wife president. Her annual salary was $1.00-plus all the haute-couture clothing she desired, a wardrobe which reportedly cost $500,000 per year. Ivana was also raising their three children, Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. She stated that parenthood fell squarely on her shoulders as Donald “was not the father which would take a stroller and go to Central Park.”  Maternity leave was of two day’s duration. In a nod to his wife’s work ethic, Donald observed Ivana was “His twin as a woman.”

 

The Trumps reigned at Le Cirque, The Pierre, and Studio 54, where photographers captured Ivana with Estée Lauder, Luciano Pavarotti, and Michael Douglas. In one shot, model Fabio carried her in his arms– a scene that could have sprung from the cover of a Harlequin romance novel. The press captured the king and queen of corporate America on the deck of their 282-foot yacht, The Trump Princess.

 

Fearful of time’s toll, Ivana underwent extensive cosmetic surgery. Gossip columnist Liz Smith wrote that Ivana had had so many operations that she was unrecognizable–until she spoke in her distinctive accent.

 

The 1972 song, “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia-” if altered to “The Night the Lights Went Out in Colorado” occurred during a Christmas Trump family ski vacation in Aspen. Ivana was in her hotel suite when she overheard her husband’s phone call, which led her to inquire, “Who is Moolah?” The truth outed when Ivana spied Donald eating lunch with Marla, a former beauty queen. Marla approached Ivana and stated, “I’m Marla Maples and I love your husband. Do you?” Ivana hurtled Donald’s clothes out the window, into the snow, along with his Rolex watch. She also delivered The Donald an ultimatum–his wife or the showgirl. Donald married Marla, with whom he had daughter Tiffany–so named after jewelry emporium.

 

Ivana’s 1990 divorce proved blood to the media’s paparazzi sharks. The wife spurned made her a heroine for discarded starter wives and earned her a cameo in the 1996 film The First Wives Club. In the movie, Ivana told her fellow jilted women-actresses Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and Bette Midler- “Don’t get mad, get everything!”

 

The divorce trial played out in a public arena. Outside the Plaza Hotel, fans of Ivana held candlelight vigils and waited for hours to catch a glimpse of her as she left the courthouse. She recalled as the lawyers lobbied verbal grenades at one another, she put on her headphone and listened to Gloria Gaynor’s lyrics from “I Will Survive,” The dissolution of their marriage provided funds to survive: Ivana received $14 million, their forty-five room Greenwich mansion, an apartment in Trump Tower, and one month use, per year, of Mar-a-Logo. In addition, her ex had to pay $650,000 annually in child support.

Not one to fade into the cast-aside spouse sunset, Ivana used her celebrity status to build her own business empire: the House of Ivana. Her venue was the Home Shopping Network; her invariable comment for each item, “Ahb-so-LUTE-ly fahn-TAS-tic!” She appeared in a milk commercial in which she quoted from the Duchess of Windsor, “You know what I say dahling? You can never be too rich or too thin.”  Three secretaries waded through her fan mail, and she was a regular on daytime talk shows.

 

In 1993, Ivana signed the deed on her own residence, an 8,725-square-foot townhouse, a block from Central Park. As it was not up to her more is more décor, she hired George Gregorian, the designer who had worked with her on the rejuvenation of the Plaza. Some of its over-the-top features were a leopard-print sitting room, a pink marble bathroom, a bedroom with a gold-embossed fireplace and Chinese murals. The top floor mainly consisted of a closet that Ivana dubbed “Indochine” because, “by the time you get to the end of it, you might as well be in another continent.” A treadmill faced onto the street, and she waved to neighbor Donatella Versace. Fearful of getting stuck in her elevator, Ivana always used the five flights of stairs. Although her marriage had imploded, Ivana still carried the romantic torch. When her daughter became engaged to the Orthodox Jewish Jared Kushner, she wrote, “If Ivanka was willing to give up lobster and bacon, she must really love him.”

 

Other plum properties were a 12,000-square-foor hacienda in Palm Beach, named Concha Marina, (Spanish for seashell), and a ninety-eight-foot yacht she christened the M.Y. Ivana. To distance herself from the pain of the divorce, she rented a house in London’s Eaton Square. At this point, she had a craving for Italian–and not of the food variety. Ivana was true to her earlier admission when she said she liked “Italian men, Italian food, Italian mountains, Italian sea, everything Italian.” She met Numero uno Latin lover, businessman Riccardo Mazzucchelli, at the Ascot races. Prior to their wedding at Manhattan’s La Cirque, when Ivana’s attorney asked him to estimate his net wealth for the prenup, Riccardo said, “Five million more or less.” The attorney guessed it was “the less.” Donald rated him “a zero.” For their Mayfair Regent marriage in New York, the thrice-wed bride wore a blue satin dress with a rock sized diamond nesting in her decolletage. As soon as the ink was dry on their wedding contract, problems reared. He complained people viewed him as Mr. Riccardo Trump that no one referred to his wife as Mrs. Mazzucchelli. The death knell of their relationship occurred at a Los Vegas concert where Wayne Newton announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, my dear friend Ivana Trump is here!” Ricardo left; divorce followed.

 

Numero due romance was Count Roffredo Gaetani dell’ Aquila d’ Aragona di Laurenzana Lovatelli. Dating a man with a title was titillating, especially as he hailed from one of the most eminent families in Italy. He had grown up in a palace, and his family tree held two popes. If his credentials were not sterling enough, Ivana said they would make love on her townhouse’s piano and that it was the best sex she had ever had. Donald, who mispronounced Roffredo, stated, “Wilfredo is a terrific guy. I hope they both have a good time spending the money that I gave Ivana.” While driving visit his mother in her palace in Tuscany, his car rolled over several times that resulted in his death.

 

Ivana’s next relationship was with the thirty-year-old Italian Rossano Rubicondi who revived the spirits of the fifty-seven-year-old Ivana whose grandchildren called Glam-ma. When asked if their disparity in age presented a problem, Ivana responded, “I’d rather be a babysitter than a nursemaid.” They planned a multi-million-dollar wedding at Mar-a-Logo that included 400 guests, a 24-piece orchestra, 25 bridesmaids, a twelve-foot-tall, tiered cake imported from Germany, all paid for by the bride. Two weeks before their vows, police stormed Ivana’s Palm Beach House due to a domestic disturbance. As Ivana had earned $2.5 million from wedding-related sponsorships, Rossano was fighting over his share. His intended ponied up $75,000. The groom charged down the aisle fist pumping to the Rocky theme, and    they appeared on the Italian version of Dancing with the Stars. The marriage was rocky from the beginning, and matters did not improve in St. Tropez when Ivana discovered her husband’s condom even though they were no longer intimate. Their marriage did not reach the one-year mark though they remained in close contact when Ivana nursed him through the cancer that claimed his life.

 

When Donald became president, Ivana was furious when she received a poor seat at the Inauguration. Ivana also rued she was not the mistress of the White House, “I’m basically first Trump wife, OK?” Although denied the perks of the First Lady, strangers accosted her with invective against her ex-husband. While Ivana probably rued losing out to Donald’s third spouse, also from Eastern Europe, Melanija (Melania) Knaus, Ivana wrote, “I wouldn’t want to be in Melania’s Louboutin’s right now.”

 

In July 2022, scheduled to fly to St. Tropez the following day, Ivana died after she fell from the top of her townhouse’s stairs from blunt impact injuries. The only witness to the horror was her Yorkie, Tiger II. Mourners, along with her family and Secret Service agents, gathered at New York City’s St. Vincent Ferrer Church. Her Catholic burial, in a gold-hued coffin, was in Trump National Golf Course in New Jersey.

 

Of her past glory days, Ivana reminisced, “I used to be Eloise of the Plaza…” an allusion to the six-year-hellion heroine of Kay Thomson’s childhood classic. The book made the Plaza a literary landmark, and the hotel displayed a portrait of Eloise with her trademark smirk. Every morning Eloise picked up the telephone in her pink suite and ordered room service saying, “It’s me. Eloise. Charge it please.” No doubt, the other famous Plaza denizen’s trademark call would have been, “It’s me, dahling. The Ivanka.”

Prev