Donald Trump’s lot in life as a ladies’ man is a lock, but a higher order of priorities--namely business and success, the latter measured in terms of deals made, properties owned and dollars in his expanding bank account—meant his early dating life required parental assistance. As a cadet at New York Military Academy, Trump would often be visited on weekends by his dad and mom—Fred and Mary Anne. They would usually be accompanied by a beautiful young woman, a different one each time, occurrences that earned him “Ladies’ Man” status in the academy’s yearbook, even though it was an all-boys school. Sandy McIntosh, a classmate of Donald’s and a witness to this parade of beauties, said that regardless whatever nonverbal message Mr. and Mrs. Trump were delivering to their son, “Our biggest advice in our lives came from Playboy magazine.” 1
More than anything, this teen beauty of the week ploy was part of Mary Anne’s attempt to encourage her son to broaden his horizons, to eventually find a girl and settle down, get married and have kids. In short, Donnie needed a wife. Perhaps concerned about what brought Donald to military school in the first place—that wild teenage rebelliousness—Mary Anne might have pushed the matchmaking in hopes of taming that nature. But Donald’s ambitions resided elsewhere—with real estate, success, money, and fame.
It was the summer of 1976, the Bicentennial celebration at full swing in America and the Summer Olympics about to land in neighboring Montreal, when Donald Trump introduced himself to Ivana Zelnicekova Winklmayr. One night around the time of his thirtieth birthday, Trump was out having drinks with Jerry Goldsmith, a private investment banker. They were perched at a Manhattan restaurant and singles bar known as Maxwell’s Plum, located at 64th and 1st and owned by Warner LeRoy, son of Mervyn LeRoy, a Hollywood producer of Wizard of Oz fame. Maxwell’s was a popular watering hole frequented by the celebrity set, among them the Hollywood likes of Barbra Streisand and Warren Beatty. Who could ask for a more appropriate setting for a first encounter between an up-and-coming real-estate billionaire and a long-legged blonde bombshell from Czechoslovakia now residing in Montreal? Ivana and several other models had come to New York to model in a fur show while also promoting the Olympic Games just weeks away.
For a high-profile bachelor like Trump, , Maxwell’s that night was a target-rich environment for food and frolic, and, from a woman’s point a view, the place to be to meet good-looking guys loaded with greenbacks and plenty of heavyweight plastic. This was no place for the likes of Abe Lincoln, but it was like home to Trump as he mingled and rubbed shoulders with the beautiful people in the city that never sleeps. It wasn’t long before Trump got a good gander of those long, athletic gams and hazel eyes of a dolled-up Ivana, twenty-seven. She wasn’t just good sport in a social sense but quite sporty, being that she was a topnotch alpine skier (her specialties were slalom and downhill) who several years earlier had been vying, ultimately unsuccessfully, for a spot on the Czech national team, with a dream of racing in the Winter Olympic Games.
“There were lots of pretty girls around, but right away Donald latched onto Ivana,” Goldsmith said. 2
“The Donald,” as Ivana would later call him, went right to work. She had recently divorced her way out of a brief marriage of convenience having to do with passports, and was now living in Montreal with a longtime boyfriend George Syrovatka, a fellow Czech and competitive skier with whom she had been close to for a number of years. Trump reserved a table for Ivana and her friends before picking up the tab at the end of the night. The next day he sent her a dozen roses, followed a few weeks later by a jaunt to Montreal to visit her and take in a fashion show while there. Soon, Ivana was back in New York, spotted around town riding in a silver limo with the license plate “DJT.” Trump squired her to Jamaica Estates to meet his parents, Fred and Mary Anne, and Trump’s full-court press on Ivana was underway.
Despite being native, respectively, to continents and tongues divided by an ocean, Donald and Ivana were remarkably in sync with one another on a number of levels; both were abundantly self-confident, had been raised by strong fathers, had laser-sharp business acumens, placed great importance in bonds among family members, and enjoyed the sporting life—Donald with his love and skill for golf, and Ivana with her world-class skiing skills. Trump soon was referring to Ivana as “his twin as a woman.” And wherever he went with her—referring to her often as “Ivaska”—he would proclaim to anyone close enough to hear him, “Isn’t she gorgeous? Have you ever seen anyone more beautiful?” 3
Less than a year later Donald and Ivana were married, the wedding taking place in Manhattan’s Marble Collegiate Church April 9, the day before Easter 1977, the service officiated by renowned minister, author, and champion-of-positivity Norman Vincent Peale. Just short of nine months later, Ivana gave birth to their first child, Donald Trump Jr., born on New Year’s Eve 1977. Donald Jr. was later followed by Ivanka (birth name “Ivana”), born in October 1981, and then Eric, the youngest of Donald and Ivana’s three children together, born in early January 1984.
Donald Trump had firmly established himself as his own man and New York City business icon—well out from under the shadow of his father, after having taken over the family business in 1971 and renaming it the Trump Organization two years later, in 1973. Even with the support of nannies, Ivana dived into motherhood, carving out ample time to be with the three kids-making her the true disciplinarian in the family, while also dividing her time to frequently be onsite to help her husband in his building of hotels and casinos.
Never content to sit behind a desk, she would often show up at job sites, smartly dressed in designer clothes and spike heels and wearing a hard hat, a clipboard in hand. Described as aggressive and inexperienced in her supervisory/support role, Ivana nonetheless drew praise from her husband. Donald, a stickler for details, was pleased that his wife was an extra set of eyes and ears at worksites (“a natural manager” he once called her). While Trump has an eye for tall, beautiful women (each of his three wives is 5-foot-8 or taller, with modeling and/or pageant experience), he likes them savvy and independent as well, as also evidenced by his subsequent marriages to Marla Maples and Melania Knauss.
“Mom was tough. She does not put up with nonsense, and I love that about her,” younger son Eric Trump said. “I think her toughness is her greatest trait. She’s also elegant, charming, and funny. Her personality spans a wide spectrum. There are a lot of people who may be charming but may not be as demanding.” 4
Donald has never been a doting dad, but even as a workaholic he has managed to squeeze in time for his kids, even if it meant their best bet to see him was to drop by his office, where he typically allowed them an open door, even during meetings and important telephone calls. But cutting out of work for hours at a time to catch a Little League game, school play, or dance recital rarely if ever made it on to his Daddy’s dance card.
“If we wanted to see him, we could see him,” Donald Jr. said. “If we called, he could be in the middle of the most important meeting, he’d take the phone call. If we wanted to show up in his office, we could play trucks while he’s dealing with the biggest guys in banking finance. We’d be making noise, and he was totally fine with it.” 5
But tossing a football or baseball around in the backyard, or a driveway game of hoops one-on-one or H-O-R-S-E? That wasn’t going to happen. At dinner time, it was usually Mom with the three kids, and two or three times a week Dad would join them at the table. Once the kids were done eating, Dad and Mom would head out to dinner, frequently as part of social functions.
“We’d talk with him (at dinnertime),” Donald Jr. said, “but he’d also be talking with my mother about business. He was good with the kids. He would joke and he’d wrestle with us, but it was for five minutes.” In answer to a question if his dad ever yelled at the kids, Junior added, “He got me good once. He was often the instigator. Putting my brother and sister [on the floor] and letting them fight. He’d sit there and laugh, and my mother would have to come in with her Eastern European accent and stop it. He’d get us wound up, then call in my mother to clean up the mess.” 6
When interviewed on late-night television by Conan O’Brien on March 16, 2007, Ivanka, then twenty-five and still single, said of her father, “He’s definitely not a typical father . . . (yet) he was the most accessible dad. He was always there. I would call him in the office . . . he’d have heads of state sitting in the office, and he would put me on speaker phone and tell them how great I was doing in school when I was around nine years old.”
The fact that all four of Donald Trump’s four grown children (including Tiffany Trump, the only child Donald and Marla Maples Trump had in their six years of marriage), are highly educated and accomplished in their own right. Yet all have remained close to their dad, even if just emotionally at times, while also working alongside him.
Notes:
1. David Brody and Scott Lamb, The Faith of Donald J. Trump. (New York: Broadside Books, 2018), 122.
2. Gwenda Blair, The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 298.
3. Blair, The Trumps, 299.
4. Ivana Trump, Raising Trump (New York: Gallery Books, 2017), 5.
5. Bill O’Reilly, The United States of Trump: How the President Really Sees America (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 68.
6. O’Reilly, The United States of Trump, 68–69.