SECRETS OF TRUMP’S 3 MARRIAGES
CHEATING, LIES & BETRAYAL The Art of the... Divorce? Shocking details about Donald Trump and the women he’s loved
It was the beginning of the end. While on a Christmas family ski vacation in Aspen, Colo., in 1989, Ivana Trump grew suspicious as she overheard her real estate tycoon husband of 12 years, Donald, on the phone with a friend talking about someone named Marla. The very next day, Ivana and Donald unexpectedly came face to face with the beautiful blonde, model Marla Maples, outside Bonnie’s, a popular mountain lunch spot. Remarkably, photographer Bill Davila — who’d been outside hoping to catch Jack Nicholson or Christie Brinkley on the slopes that day — saw the trio and snapped a single image of them together, not thinking much of it at first. But he’d soon learn that the future president of the United States’ first marriage had unraveled before his eyes. “The picture tells the whole story,” Bill tells In Touch of that nowinfamous photo. “You can see that Donald’s dealing with being busted or he’s having to spill the beans to Ivana about whatever happened between him and Marla.”
Two months later, divorce proceedings began. And just a year after their contentious split was finalized, Donald married his mistress, Marla. That union didn’t even last four years, and in 2005, Donald wed his third model, Melania Knauss, who is now under global scrutiny as she adjusts to her role as first lady. Over the last 40 years, Donald’s marriages to these three very different women who won his heart, shared his bed and raised his children have been marked by jealousy, betrayal, deception and, despite all that, real love. Now, In Touch is revealing the dark and surprising secrets of the most significant romances in the mogul-turned-worldleader’s life. “Marla was a beautiful, sexy woman, but I think the two important relationships in his life were Ivana and Melania,” Trump’s longtime friend Federico Pignatelli, founder of NYC’S Pier 59 photo studio, tells In Touch. “Those were the two women who made a difference in his life.”
IVANA
Ivana was far more than a starter wife. Though the platinum-blond Czechoslovakian model, who gave birth to Donald’s three eldest kids ( Donald Jr., 39, Ivanka, 35, and Eric, 33) after marrying him in 1977, was known for her glamorous looks, showy parties and designer wardrobe, she was also a formidable business partner who ran one of his Atlantic City, N. J., casinos and helped elevate his image in the ’80s. “Ivana was and is an extremely opinionated woman and definitely a smart one. And he is a smart and opinionated man. It was not a very quiet relationship,” says Federico. “They had opposing views, and they would fight often. It was a very tormented relationship at the end.”
The marriage took a dark turn after Donald allegedly visited Ivana’s plastic surgeon in their final months as a couple, according to one report. Author Harry
Hurt III’S 1993 book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, alleges Donald was in pain and unhappy with the results of a November 1989 scalp-reduction procedure to remove the bald spot on the back of his head. He allegedly threatened to sue and kill the doctor, who also performed liposuction on his chin and midsection. (Donald later denied having surgery.) In Hurt’s account, Donald blamed Ivana for recommending him, shouting at her, “Your f---ing doctor has ruined me!” As he raged at her inside their Trump Tower triplex, the book claims, he threw Ivana on the bed, ripped off her clothing, yanked out pieces of her hair, unzipped his pants and sexually assaulted her. She told friends, “He raped me,” according to Hurt, and repeated the claim in a deposition while under oath. She later softened her story in a 1993 statement released by Donald’s lawyers, explaining she felt “violated” and hadn’t meant rape in a literal or criminal sense. (Donald has publicly denied this account as “obviously false,” and has described Hurt as “an unattractive guy” “without much talent.”) Curiously, Ivana’s original testimony, as well as another box of court papers
related to a separate financial fraud lawsuit she filed against Donald amid their divorce, have since gone missing from the court’s files.
In a candid 1991 interview, Ivana, now 68, opened up about her relationship with Donald. “I tried for a couple of months to live with the idea [of him cheating and lying],” she told Barbara Walters, but quickly realized “I just had to know that I had The Donald out of my life.” (Yes, Ivana’s the one responsible for the nickname “The Donald,” which started because of “my bad English.”) A New York judge granted a divorce and per their prenup (which underwent several revisions over the years), Ivana received $14 million, a 45-room Greenwich, Conn., mansion, an apartment in the Trump Plaza and the use of the 118room Mar-a-lago mansion in Florida for one month a year.
Donald was thrilled to move on. “People thought he would be alarmed if it was revealed that he was having an affair. But it turned out he didn’t give a s--- if people knew,” says famed NYC gossip columnist Liz Smith. It could be, in part, that he was loving the attention. One famous February 1990 headline in the New York Post
painted him as a paragon of masculinity: “Marla boasts to her pals about Donald: ‘Best sex I ever had.’” (Asked years later if she’d really said that, Marla demurred, “Did I ever say it? I don’t want to destroy him.”)
MARLA
At one point, Marla, 53, was madly in love with Donald. Desperate to marry him, the Georgia beauty queen-turned-model packed a wedding dress whenever they traveled. “You’ve got to be prepared,” Marla famously said. Finally, in 1993, six years after meeting at a party Donald threw to celebrate the publication of The Art of the Deal in 1987, and two months after giving birth to their daughter, Tiffany, now 23, Marla got her wish. They tied the knot at Manhattan’s Plaza hotel. But three and a half years later, he pulled the plug on their marriage just shy of a key milestone: the four-year marriage mark that according to their prenup would have guaranteed her more than twice as much in the event of a split. Instead, Marla reportedly walked away with just $2 million, and she found out he was divorcing her after he first told reporters at the New York Post, according to
Trump biographer Robert Slater.
The breakup came after an incident that made Donald look like a cuckold. In April 1996, a police report was made public after a cop discovered Marla with one of Donald’s bodyguards, Spencer Wagner, at 4 a.m. on a Florida beach minutes from Mar-aLago. Though Marla claimed Spencer stopped so she could go to the bathroom on the beach as he drove her home from a night out with friends, “I thought something was going on,” the officer said. The bodyguard also denied any hanky-panky, but Donald fired him anyway four months later. (Spencer died of a drug overdose in 2012.) “Marla was not happy after a while,” Linda Stasi, New York Daily News columnist and author of Book of Judas (out in September), who has been friends with Donald since 1991, recalls to In Touch. They just weren’t a good fit. “He had told me about Marla at the time. He’d say, ‘You know, I like to drive home from Atlantic City, stop at Mcdonald’s and eat fries and burgers, and she wants to go out and be social and I’m not a social butterfly. I don’t want to do that.’”
MELANIA
Melania came into Donald’s life as his divorce to Marla was dragging on. He met the Slovenia-born model at a September 1998 New York Fashion Week party he’d attended with another woman. She wouldn’t give him her number because he had a date, so he gave her his. “I have to say at the beginning, I didn’t think he was super serious. Melania was a very beautiful woman, very elegant, but my impression was he was not taking it as seriously as it became,” his friend Federico tells In Touch. “I think that Melania literally conquered him with time, patience, being smart, with her personality, because he’s a man that already had kids and ex-wives so he didn’t have an urge to have a family.” Seven years later, Donald married her. They welcomed son Barron in 2006.
Melania, 47, is the love of Donald’s life and Donald, 71, is “her hero,” says Federico. “I don’t think it’s all the money. She’s truly in love with him. There is so much affection between the two.” Federico adds that even after the dramatic presidential campaign and difficult first few months in Washington, D.C., “Their relationship is strong and solid.” Melania and Ivana are polar opposites, he says. “Melania is a much more relaxed, agreeable woman. She’s the kind of woman to say, ‘ We have enough and we should be happy and enjoy it.’ Ivana was the type that said, ‘Let’s do more.’ Ivana was pushing him hard.”
Melania accepts Donald for who he is. “I think the mistake some people make is they try to change the man they love after they get married. You cannot change a person. You accept the person,” she said in 2010. “He loves business — he breathes business. I love that about him. Doesn’t bother me. I am very independent.”
His friend, Linda, agrees that Donald breathes business, and would argue that that’s the love of his life. “He falls madly in love and then he goes about his business,” she says. “He just doesn’t want to be bothered with the details. He’s too busy doing other stuff. That’s why,” she adds, “every one of his marriages has involved tremendous drama.” ◼