Donald Trump’s Early Life and Wives Ivana, Marla & Melania

/ 85 Comments

Donald Trump was born on 14th June, 1946 in Queens, New York City. He was one of five children, the fourth to be born, and he has gone on to become a great many things in his life. He’s not only the 45th President of the United States of America, but he is also a TV personality, known for his part on the American version of The Apprentice, a politician, and a very shrewd businessman. The Trump Organzation, which we have come to know as Trump’s, was actually created by his Grandfather on his father’s side, and it was a construction firm and real estate company also. He actually ran this company for over four decades, close to five, until he then became one of the most powerful men in the world.

It was during the seventies that Donald Trump first started making a name for himself, and his “celebrity” status has continue to grow in the years that followed, especially in the field of making money. This is something he has become rather admired for. He is not admired, on the other hand, by many when it comes to his political views, and also in some of his straight-talking and outward approach to both politics and business.

Donald Trump 2

Source: The Odyssey Online

It is this that has continued to keep him in the media, and has perhaps lead to where he is today. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with what he says, or whether you like the fact he is now the 45th President of the United States of America, he’s on the forefront of everyone’s minds, and he’s also on everyone’s lips. When people are talking about him, his business grows. His profit increases. He isn’t a stranger to losing, but he takes losing on the chin, enabling him to grow. His bad luck and close to bankruptcy situations have just made him smarter when it comes to getting what he wants and making money, and let’s face it – he’s gotten what every American man wants … the chance to run the United States of America.

He was a hot-headed and short-fused kid, and his determination and “bossiness” carried right on through into his teenage years. At the age of 13, his tearaway teenage ways led to him being enrolled in military school, but he was always the captain of various sports teams, and he was known for being presidential even then – class president.

A Father’s Influence

Born in the Bronx, New York, Fred Trump was a successful real estate developer, and it is here that Donald perhaps picked up his great negotiation and business skills. It was in Queens, New York, that Donald was brought up, and sadly his relationship with his father didn’t last for long. When Donald Trump was just 13 years old, his father passed away of pneumonia on 25th June, 1999.

Donald Trump 1

Source: The Daily Beast

Fred Trump was once reported to have said that his mother took up sewing for other people in order to raise a few more dollars in order to make it by. His father had never grumbled about that, instead making it his mission to change. And it was at this time that he started the design and building businesses of prefabricated garages. It would seem that Donald Trump’s grandfather had passed a smart business brain down to his son, who in turn passed it down to Donald Trump. At this time, automobiles were starting to take off. People needed those prefabricated garages, and for a reasonable price (to the customer), Fred was able to reap an impressive profit. Being too young to be able to run such a business himself, Fred, at 15 years old, started up a business name with his mother. It was called E. Trump & Son, and it was necessary for his mother to son the checks on Fred’s behalf.

Donald Trump 3

Source: The New York Times

Fred moved on from garages during the time of the Great Depression, and homes that were designed for families were on in high demand. That moved on to supermarket, and it is said that Donald’s father, Fred, was actually responsible for the idea of the supermarket that we see today. Moving on into the second World War and Fred had evolved his business once again, building apartments for the Royal Navy, and also barracks too, and once the war was over, he then moved on to a different type of housing once again – houses for those who were earning a “middle” income. Just before the turn of the millennium, Fred Trump was reported to have been worth somewhere in the region of 250 – 300 million dollars.

Donald Trump – The Dream

By the time Donald Trump came along, his father, Fred, was a wealthy man, and a very keen and savvy businessman to boot. He’d learned a lot from those days he started as a prefabricated garage salesman and creator, but from passing those skills on to his son, Donald has been able to earn even more still, and learn more also.

Donald Trump – The Women

As a youngster, Donald Trump focused on getting where he wanted to be – a smart man with good business skills. For a long time, there didn’t seem to be anyone special in his life, definitely not as far as a “loved one” was concerned, and it wasn’t until Ivana Marie Zelníčková came along that we knew of Trump’s personal relationships at all. They started dating when he was around thirty years old.

Ivana Zelníčková

Born in Czechoslovakia, Ivana had used her skiing talents to bring her to the United States, and she jumped on the opportunity to better herself, getting a physical education master’s degree, and also studied both business, and decorating and home design / decor too. These are two traits that proved useful, not just to Ivana, but also to Trump and his business model.

Donald Trump 4

Source: Politico

A year after they started dating, Ivana and Donald Trump married in Manhattan, 1977. That same year, the couple’s first child was born, and Donald Trump’s first son – Donald, Jr. Ivan soon followed in 1981, and then three years later, Eric also. Four years after that, Ivana became a United States citizen after being naturalized, and it was when Donald Trump had an affair with an actress, Marla Maples, that an end was called to their marriage. They divorced in 1992, after just 15 years of marriage.

During their relationship, Donald Trump found wealth, but not the fame he craved. To try and achieve it, he did his bit for charitable causes, often taking it upon himself to pay off the banks and avoid the foreclosure of poverty-stricken family homes. The entire communities would be involved the events, eventually leading to him becoming relatively high-profile, and the Trump’s together, Ivana and Donald, created a business that would start to take the world by storm. The Trump Plaza was constructed, as was the Grand Hyatt Hotel.

Donald Trump 5

Source: People

Of course, Donald Trump didn’t get to his “celebrity status” alone, he had a little help, and that came in the form of Ivana. She had the kind of personality that could charm anyone, and she was a very beautiful face too. She soon became interior design’s Vice President for the Trump Organization, but soon wanted to take a little time away from working so hard in order to spend time with her young and new family. Although Trump is often displayed as a rather sexist symbol, his work with Ivana certainly shows otherwise. Her positions within the Atlantic City side of the company were dropped after her wish to take a back seat for a while, but she was given the position of President of Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel. Throughout the seventies and a lot of his earlier career, Donald Trump faced constant criticism over the amount of power he gave to the women within his company, particularly Ivana. This is quite the opposite from the POTUS-running sexist that we were led to believe Trump was.

Marla Maples

Marl Maples was an actrress and a beauty pageant winner from Georgia when the rumours of her affair with Donald Trump began to materialise, and it wasn’t long after Ivana was dropped from Atlantic City and placed in Manhattan either. He was 40 years of age at the time, and Marla was only 23, causing quite the stir. Reports circulated suggesting that Trump had tried to keep the affair very quiet, and even offered Marla gifts and huge money amounts in order to keep quiet. Marla, on the other hand, wanted things to be very much out in the open after their “secret affair” turned out to be not so secret, and pressured the future President to tell his wife, Ivana, and leave her too.

Donald Trump 6

Source: New York Daily News

It wasn’t long before Trump was taking Marla virtually everywhere he went, even putting her up in hotels when he was California with his family. He frequently would leave his wife and children behind to spend time with his mistress, and it was in 1991 that things soon came to a very big head. His wife and mistress met each other on the ski slopes accidentally, even though some believed that Marla engineered this meeting herself. There was a confrontation, and it wasn’t long after that, that Ivana decided to file for divorce after her husband’s infidelity. She then had to deal with the torment of watching her now ex-husband, and father of her children, grace the front of magazines all over the world, arm in arm with the woman he had an affair with.

Bizarrely, Trump didn’t just date Marla after his divorce from Ivana. He was also said to have dated both Carla Bruni, the First Lady of France, and Gabriela Sabatini, Argentinian tennis champ. Despite these brief romances, he pined for his true love – Marla, and it wasn’t long before they too came together. They had a baby in 1993, and married a few months after that, and they decided to call their baby girl Tiffany, after the iconic Tiffany & Co. Donald Trump’s father, Fred, was to be best man at this wedding, but their wedded bliss was sadly not going to last for very long.

Donald Trump 8

Source: Us Weekly

Trump had the hardest time during this period of his life, and the affair and subsequent split from beautiful businesswoman, Ivana, had seriously dented his persona. Although still a shrewd businessman, he was no longer seen as the loyal and loving family man that he once was. He worked hard to regain his good reputation again, but it took a long time. He was close to bankrupt, getting into millions of dollars worth of debts on various ventures, but he didn’t manage to pull himself out of the slump. Some reports say that he believes his divorce from Ivana, and then his marriage to Marla, were mistakes, but this is something that Donald Trump himself has never officially said.

Donald Trump 12

Source: Dish Nation

He used his reputation to help him in the business world, becoming the face in various commercials, and although his life seemed to be getting better, his marriage was not. In 1999, the couple split and divorced. Marla and Donald Trump were no more.

Was the divorce an amicable one? Not likely – Marla was said to be having an affair with director, Michael Mailer. They met while they were filming together, and after her divorce from Trump, they soon announced that they were dating, and then engaged. Sadly, this romance didn’t work out for Marla either. The couple split up, and Michael met and married someone else. Marla became a minor celebrity, on the other hand, and found that she could live quite comfortably as ex wife of Donald Trump, and mother to one of his heirs, Tiffany.

Kara Young

Kara Young was not only a very beautiful woman, both an actress and a model, she was also very business-minded. Some might say that she was similar to Ivana in that respect, and that’s one reason why Donald Trump found her so appealing. The pair started dating after his relationship with Marla deteriorated, and Kara had also not long split from her husband. She was actually dating another chap at the time that Trump came around – A.J. Benza, who was a tabloid columnist, and a rather successful one at that. Sadly, he didn’t have what it took to compete with Trump, and it was Trump who got the girl.

Donald Trump 7

Source: Daily Express

The sordid love triangle was picked up by chat show host, Howard Stern, and he invited them all to the show to talk about their relationship(s). The night proved to be a complete embarrassment for Kara Young, as Trump announced the pair were no longer together. Quite the opposite to what Young had thought, it would seem. It’s unclear as to why Trump chose to “dump” his actress, model and business-minded girlfriend, although it’s believe he thought dating another model and actress, just like Marla Maples, was a bad idea. It certainly didn’t hinder either of the pair – Trump went on to continue making his millions, and then run the USA, and Young became a correspondent for the Fox News station.

Melania Knauss

Melania follows the same pattern of woman that Donald Trump seems to appreciate – beautiful to look at, bit with intelligence to go hand in hand with it. She is a worldly woman, articulate and intelligent, despite how she may appear. A former model in her home country of Slovenia, she is known for her love for plastic surgery, and the surgical enhancements she has had.

Donald Trump 10

Source: Closer Weekly

Melania and Donald Trump were said to have started dating at some point in the nineties, and some reports even suggested that Trump could still have been married to his previous wife, Marla Maples, when the pair first met and their chemistry sparked. It wasn’t long after his divorce that Trump started to officially endorse Melania’s career, and he took her with him when he appeared on various TV shows. It was this that led to an influx of modelling offers for Melania, and her career kicked off once again.

The pair were to be married in 2005, although the day was met by its fair share of controversy. Their wedding, a rather lavish affair, was compared to his first wedding day, with ex-wife Ivana.

Donald Trump 9

Source: StyleCaster

Although a very smart woman, Melania seems to have chosen NOT to lead with her business brain. She had one child with Trump, a decision that has taken up a lot of her time, and her earlier life seems to be somewhat of a mystery. There aren’t many early photos of the now First Lady, but it seems that the plastic surgery list is rather extensive. Professional plastic surgeons have come forward to confirm it looks like she’s had at least two surgical procedures on her nose, and also implants in her cheeks too, giving her that look she has become famous for. There are also reports that Melania and Ivanka, Trump’s daughter with Ivana, may even share the same plastic surgeon. This rumour has been further fuelled by the fact Ivanka’s nose now looks very similar to Melania’s, and there has been no secret made of Ivanka’s previously failed rhinoplasty attempts.

Donald Trump – Lessons Learned

These days, Donald Trump tries to keep his personal life personal, something he failed to do at times throughout the earlier part of his career and life in the limelight. His reputation precedes him, even to this day, but it does seem he may have learned by his lessons. His affair with Marla, and subsequent divorce from Ivana, definitely hindered his progress somewhat, and at the very least, dented his confidence a little. He is just a regular human being, just like you and me, and he’s guilty of making mistakes that many of us have made. There have been zero reports of Trump ever being unfaithful to Melania, and this is despite hundreds and thousands of women throwing themselves at him.

Donald Trump – Presidency

When Obama was the President of the United States, Donald Trump very public criticised him for being so secretive about many things, despite promising to be entirely transparent. When this “vendetta” of sorts started, the press went to town on Trump’s personal life, embellishing some stories and totally fabricating others, and it seemed that many were still very much focused on that affair with Marla, and the fact that he was no longer a “family man”. That, combined with the debt he experienced, has been pitted together to come up with a misconception of a man that the real truth proves is just that – a misconception. The fact of the matter is this – Donald Trump is a man who knows what he wants, and seems to know how to go right out there and get it. He wanted wealth and fame so he went out there to go and get it. He wanted the Presidency, and he went out there and got it.

Donald Trump 11

He says something in one of his books, and it seems to sum up Trump’s stance on things quite nicely:

“The ignorant will point to a man’s failures and dwell on them, but the successful will realize that everyone has failures in life, and it’s what one does about the failure that makes or breaks a person.”

Trump has become a President that some can really relate to, going back to the same way of thinking as Ronald Reagan and reducing taxes paid by the vast amounts of working-class American citizens. It’s something that worked well with Reagan was in power, but many wonder if Trump has what it takes to put those theories and ideas into practice. There are even some people that would suggest running for Presidency was just another PR stunt – a way to boost his business, and also ties with other nations too.

One thing is for sure – whatever you think of President Donald Trump, he’s here to stay.