This is the woman who made Donald Trump a household name

LONG before The Apprentice and the phrase “You’re fired!”, when he still had a full head of hair, a star was born — all thanks to one woman.

Without Ivana, there would be no Donald Trump. Picture: Fred Dufour

SHE’S BEEN parodied, unceremoniously dumped for a younger woman and painted as a mindless bimbo.

But there’s one thing no one can take away from Ivana Trump: She created The Donald.

History shows that the Republican frontrunner in this year’s United States election campaign would not have become who he is today were it not for his first wife.

Firstly, the former department store model and alleged Olympic skier gave Mr Trump his nickname — even attempting to trademark “The Donald” in 1999.

But, more importantly, the Czech immigrant — who, like her ex-husband, wants to keep Mexicans out of the US — made Trump a household name.

Without her flashy dresses, broken English and determination to climb the social ladder, the hotel and casino tycoon would have been just another 1980s wheeler-and-dealer — who, by late 1990, was officially broke.

But with the doting Ivana on his arm, dragging him to the social engagements he dreaded, Donald Trump became an object of fascination.

The duo were a regular fixture in gossip column inches and Mr Trump attracted a bevy of fans, so inspired by his brash self-confidence that they mobbed him when he appeared in the flesh at one of his venues.

Ivana proclaimed that, in 50 years’ time, “We will be the Rockefellers”.

Ivana Trump predicted that she and Donald would attain the renown of the Rockefeller family. Picture: Getty Images

Journalist Liz White recalled the pair’s early years on the New York social scene in her memoir Natural Blonde.

Donald “was the king of hyperbole and he had just the requisite touch of Elvis vulgarity to endear him to the common man”, Smith wrote.

“As for Ivana, I liked her, too, but never knew what she was saying. She talked in a machinegun patter that was mostly incomprehensible.”

The gossip queen took a shine to the couple because of their underdog status among the city’s elite, describing them as “refreshing, if a bit presumptuous and naive”.

Smith recounted how her editors only let her include Donald Trump in an annual list of New York’s movers and shakers because “his buildings and his book and his ego are so much bigger than life”.

Ultimately, and sadly for Ivana, it was the meltdown of the pair’s 14-year marriage that shot the Trumps into tabloid superstardom.

After months of swirling rumours, Donald Trump ditched Ivana for a woman half her age, 20-year-old actress Marla Maples.

Smith, who broke the story in her Daily News column on February 11, 1990, described it as “the biggest story I’ve ever seen that isn’t important — next to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.”

It prompted eleven consecutive days of front-page stories, drowning out the coverage of such momentous events as Nelson Mandela’s release from prison after 27 years.

Transformed from “braggart” into “stud”.

It was the tabloid tale that just kept giving.

It wasn’t just rival tabloids like the New York Post that picked up the story; highbrow television stations got in on the action, Smith said, although they “looked down their noses at the rest of the media” before offering “expert opinions” on the split.

Newsweek called the Trump marriage a symbol of the nasty 1980s, “the epitome of glee, vulgarity and self promotion”.

Interest in the pair was so high that Time Magazine ran a cover story asking why Americans were such avid readers of gossip.

“Donald Trump was now enjoying his new sex symbol image,” said Smith.

“Before, he’d been just a braggart and a show-off, but the tabloids were making him look like a stud, catnip to women.”

And so a star was born.

Donald Trump went on to lose and regain his wealth, star in the hit reality television show The Apprentice and trademark the term “You’re Fired!”

Naturally, he swapped Marla Maples for his current wife, Slovenian ex-model Melania Trump.

And on June 16 last year, he announced his candidacy for President of the United States, fulfilling a decades-old political dream.

Western civilisation reaches its peak.

Ivana, for her part, went on to become a jewellery and cosmetics entrepreneur and best-selling author — defying her ex-husband’s legal attempts to silence her semi-autobiographical, ghostwritten debut novel For Love Alone, written under a $5 million two-book publishing deal.

The Telegraph Mirror called it “a soppy love story centred around a family who are about as interesting as a breakfast of soggy toast and tepid tea”.

But the public disagreed, and it sold like hotcakes.

“Let’s face it, any ex wife of mine could write a book about me and have a guaranteed bestseller,” Donald Trump remarked while battling to shut down the novel. “I did it for the children, so they won’t have to keep hearing this trash all over the place.”

The suit centred on a clause in the Trumps’ divorce agreement that prevented Ivana from speaking publicly about their marriage.

Donald’s lawyers dubbed the book — which tells the story of a young former ski champion and aspiring model who, like Ivana, fled communist Czechoslovakia — a “thinly veiled” account of the Trump marriage.

But in an interview with New Idea, Ivana insistated the tale, in which protagonist Katrinka Kover’s husband took part in an extramarital affair with a gold-digging Madam named Sugar, was strictly fiction.

Ivana insisted her salacious novel was “strictly fiction”.

Ivana reinvented herself after marriage as a literary entrepreneur.

The battle that played out in tabloid headlines was more entertaining than any novel, and the Trumps secured a permanent place of notoriety in the public consciousness.

Michele Field wrote in her Literary London column in The Australian that Ivana and Donald Trump’s respective publications were “so bad they’re funny”.

“Even as Trump’s fortune slides, the books sell because people like to laugh at people who overrate themselves,” she wrote in October 1990.

Later that month, Forbes downgraded Donald Trump’s net worth from $2 billion to zero as creditors circled his debt-ridden empire of casinos, hotels, skyscrapers and Trump Shuttle airline.

This financial demise was reported somewhat gleefully by those who had predicted his “inevitable” fall, and public interest was as high as ever.

Celebrity agent Max Markson even dug up Ivana’s long-lost first husband at Dee Why on Sydney’s northern beaches, where the Austrian former skiing instructor was living in a humble apartment and working in real estate.

Ivana had married Alfred Winklmayr, a platonic friend, to secure a dual passport in order to escape Soviet Czechoslovakia.

After pocketing an undisclosed sum for his “story”, then 42-year-old Winklmayr told London’s Daily Mail: “She’s certainly come a long way since I knew her”.

“I didn’t mean rape rape.”

Fast forward to the current US presidential race, and Ivana remains relevant.

Having built a bridge over her messy divorce, the socialite-slash-businesswoman counts herself as one of Donald Trump’s key supporters.

In between extolling her ex-husband’s virtues, Ivana has been busy revising historical accusations of rape, and Trump’s alleged obsession with Adolf Hitler’s speeches.

And she’s been just as attentive to her own personal image, making a guest appearance this week in her daughter Ivanka’s #WomenWhoWork blog.

After introducing her mother as her “role model and muse”, Invanka lays out “Ivana’s secrets to success”.

“In the 1980s, as a hands-on parent and highly successful professional, Ivana Trump defied the rules of the socialite scene by insisting on pursuing a demanding career, instead of filling her time with ladies luncheons and shopping sprees,” the blog reads.

It goes on to include Ivana’s recollection of the “golden years” of the 1980s hotel industry.

“As a beautiful, very wealthy woman, there was a stigma that I was supposed to be home, to dress up for visitors, go to lunches, support charities here and there — but that was not all I was about,” she is quoted as saying.

In the mid-2000s Ivana Trump tried unsuccessfully to open a luxury resort at Queensland’s Airlie Beach.

Ivana served as a senior executive in the Trump group for seven years, first as head of interior design, then as president of Trumps Castle in Atlantic City.

Her tenure there is subject to differing accounts, with Spy Magazinereporting that staff regarded her as a “controlled madwoman” who emulated her husband’s screaming management style.

She reportedly worked long hours and signed every cheque personally, but shied away from high-level decisions.

Insiders described her as “a very different kind of chief executive”, more concerned with furnishings than managing budgets, legal disputes and regulatory meetings.

“Donald was really in charge” Trump Castle’s former PR director Dennis Gorski told Spy. “He was like an absentee landlord.”

Trump reportedly moved her to the Plaza Hotel back in New York so that he could continue his Atlantic City dalliance with Maples.

He called a press conference to announce Ivana’s new position, humiliating her by telling reporters: “My wife, Ivana, is a brilliant manager. I will pay her one dollar a year and all the dresses she can buy!”

THE LAST LAUGH

Vanity Fair reported in its September 1990 dissection of the marital breakdown that Donald phoned Ivana several weeks after their split to suggest that they reconcile in front of the cameras.

“Why don’t we walk down Fifth Avenue together for the photographers and pretend that this entire scandal has been a publicity stunt?” he reportedly said.

“We could say that we wanted to see who would side with you and who would side with me.”

Instead, Ivana filed for divorce on uncontested grounds of cruel and inhuman treatment.

She reportedly walked away with $14 million, along with their Connecticut mansion and a luxury Trump Tower apartment, plus $650,000 alimony, and found love again with not one, but two Italian stallions.

But what’s priceless is Ivana’s indisputable role in having created, for better or for worse, one of this century’s most well-known personalities.

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Originally published as This is the woman who made Donald Trump a household name