The story of Donald Trump's first wives
Win or lose the elections, the tycoon already has his place in the annals as the first gringo president with three marriages and two divorces in tow. Waste of opulence, fights for money and infidelities marked his life together with Ivana and Marla, the former Trump ladies.
Donald Trump not only overturned the way of doing politics by winning votes at the point of distributing insults left and right or adopting extreme positions, but with him, the once puritanical American electorate got rid of prejudices that yesterday would have prevented him from running for the Presidency to anyone, however charismatic he was.
Before Trump's triumph in 2016, for 240 years of history, only one divorcee - Ronald Reagan - had been elected president, while Rachel Jackson and Betty Ford were the only first ladies who were married before being the wives of Andrew Jackson and Gerald Ford, respectively.
In the 1960s, Nelson Rockefeller, from one of the richest families in the world, lost the opportunity to govern, disowned by public opinion after having left his wife for his lover, also his adulteress.
The crowds who, against all odds, brought the real estate mogul and reality TV star to the White House did not turn their backs on him for his past, thus becoming the first American president to have three "trophy" wives. , famous for their beauty and recognized in the show. Two of them, the first and the third, curiously, are immigrants, a group against which the most powerful man on the planet has been hostile.
In his youth, the eagerness to increase the fortune left to him by his father, Fred Trump, and achieve what he did not achieve, to conquer Manhattan, made him a little indifferent to women, until he met the Czech Olympic skier Ivana Marie Zelníčková .
After divorcing her first husband, Alfred Winklmayr, in 1973, she mocked the communist regime of her homeland and settled in Montreal, Canada, where she worked as a model and was hired to promote the Olympic Games that would take place in that city in 1976. With this mission, he arrived in New York that year, but made time for a drink at the bar of the Maxwell's Plum restaurant, where models and hostesses came to conquer the best parties.
There, her blonde shot at Trump, who let her sneak into line, in exchange for her letting him sit at her table. Her wedding, a year later and with 600 guests, was the most pompous of her time.
The spouses, temperamental, competitive and upbeat, became the queen couple of the high life of the Big Apple, but she did not settle for being the pretty and wasteful wife, but instead held management positions in her husband's conglomerate, as vice president of interior design and president, no less, than the mythical Plaza Hotel.
In the salons of New York the splendor of their residences and the imperial air of the spouses were commented, whose harmony fell apart when Donald, now in his forties, began to secretly meet Marla Maples, a southern beauty, 17 years younger than him and who had been Miss Hawaiian Tropic and finalist in the Miss Georgia USA pageant.
Wherever Trump went with his family, he secretly installed his mistress in a nearby place, until one day the two women came face to face on the snowy peaks of Colorado. Ivana, who gave Trump three children, Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka, asked for a divorce and his prestige was turned to shame, because the press revealed the most salacious details of her infidelity and her bitter separation. .
It was said that, blind with fury at the humiliation, and although the prenuptial agreement only recognized her 10 million dollars, the Czech wanted half of the fortune of "the Donald", as they called him, including the jewel in the crown, the Plaza Hotel. This sparked the famous New York Post headline, "Gimme the Plaza!" (Give me the Plaza!). In 1990, they finally reached a settlement whereby she got $ 14 million more luxurious properties, but not the coveted hospitality insignia.
In those days, Marla stole the limelight from Ivana by declaring to the Post, on the cover: “With Donald I have had the best sex of all my life. He is a wonderful lover. " In 1993 Trump led her down the aisle, two months after the birth of her daughter Tiffany, with whom the candidate now has a rather distant relationship.
It all ended in divorce in 1999, amid gossip that she cheated on him with the film director Michael Mailer, who later failed to keep his promise of marriage.
The future president had not been wasting time either, as he was unfaithful to Marla with the Slovenian model Melania Knauss, his current wife, who, like her husband, broke some records as first lady. The most striking? She is the only wife of an American president to have posed nude, as happened in 2000, when she did it for the British edition of GQ.
The relationship between the three women has had its flats, especially due to Ivana's incendiary temperament, very similar to that of the president. Marla Maples, who has been a model, actress and television personality, does not forgive him that he took Trump a quarter of a century later and every time he refers to her in the media he calls her “the showgirl” ( the cabaretera).
Melania, on the other hand, she saw as inept to be the hostess of the White House, but the gossips comment that she is actually envious for occupying a place that she would like to have. In fact, she once provoked her by declaring, "I am the first lady Trump, then I am the first lady."
