Marriage to Donald Trump
Ivana was in New York City with a group of models in 1976 when she met Donald Trump. On April 9, 1977, the couple married at Marble Collegiate Church in a wedding at which Norman Vincent Peale officiated. They became tabloid figures in New York society during the 1980s and worked together on several large projects, including the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the renovation of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City, and the construction of the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
During the marriage, Ivana and Donald had three children: Donald Jr. (born 1977), Ivana (Ivanka) Marie (born 1981), and Eric (born 1984). Donald Jr. learned to speak fluent Czech (with the help of his maternal grandfather), while Ivanka gained only a basic understanding of Czech, and Eric was not exposed to his mother's native language since his grandparents were by then comfortable using English.
A reviewer of the 2018 Netflix documentary miniseries on Donald, Trump: An American Dream, described Ivana as "a charismatic workaholic, a career woman, an equal", and a life partner deliberately chosen by Trump to "work beside him and challenge him".
The Trumps' troubled marriage became the subject of public interest over the Christmas holidays in 1989, when they were seen fighting after Ivana encountered Donald's mistress, Marla Maples. The Chicago Tribune reported that by February 1990, Donald had locked Ivana out of her office at the Plaza Hotel, and a legal battle ensued over the legitimacy of the four prenuptial agreements the pair had successively negotiated over the years.
In October 1990, Ivana's 63-year-old father, Miloš Zelníček, died suddenly from a heart attack. According to The Guardian, her father was an informer for Czechoslovakia's Státní bezpečnost (StB) intelligence service who relayed information from his daughter, including a correct prediction that George H. W. Bush would win the 1988 presidential election. Despite their marital troubles and pending divorce, Donald stood at her side at her father's funeral in Zlín held in November 1990.
The Trumps' divorce proceedings received worldwide publicity. Front-page coverage appeared in New York tabloid newspapers for 11 days in a row, and the story was the subject of gossip columnist Liz Smith's entire news coverage for three months. In a deposition relating to their divorce, Ivana accused Donald of rape. In Harry Hurt's book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, she confirmed that she had "felt violated". However, in a statement provided by Donald and his lawyers, she said that she had used the word rape, but she did not "want [her] words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense". The uncontested divorce was granted in December 1990 on the grounds of cruel and inhumane treatment by Donald. Ivana had to sign a non-disclosure agreement as a condition of the divorce settlement, and she was required to seek Donald's permission before publicly discussing their marriage. The New York Times reported in 1991 that Ivana's divorce settlement included $14 million, a 45-room Connecticut mansion, an apartment in the Trump Plaza, and the use of Mar-a-Lago for one month a year.
