A new book by Donald Trump's first wife pulls back the curtain on a tumultuous period of the President's life, including the messy divorce that was splashed across New York's tabloids for weeks.
Ivanka Trump, who was married to the real estate magnate from 1977 to 1992, writes in Raising Trump that she knew her marriage was over soon after a day in December 1989.
This young blonde woman approached me out of the blue and said ‘I’m Marla and I love your husband. Do you?’ I said ‘Get lost. I love my husband.’ It was unladylike but I was in shock.Ivana Trump
Trump's public affair with Marla Maples spawned the infamous "Best Sex I've Ever Had" headline in the New York Post in 1990. After divorcing his first wife, Trump married Maples in 1993.
Raising Trump is set to be released next week.
Inside the Book: Donald Trump, the Wooer & Heartbreaker
In the book, Ivana writes glowingly about her marriage to Trump and her prominent role at the Trump Organisation. But then she unburdens herself about the heartache that Trump's affair with Maples caused her and the couple's three children, Donald Jr, Ivanka, and Eric Donald Jr, who didn't speak to his father for a year after the split.
I can only shake my head at how it insane it was. Couldn’t turn on the television without hearing my name.Ivana Trump in Raising Trump
Much of the book is spent recounting Ivana Trump's childhood in Europe, her burgeoning modeling career in New York and Trump's courtship. She writes that, at their first meeting, Trump secured her and friends a table at a hot Manhattan restaurant, paid the check and chauffeured her back to her hotel in a giant Cadillac.
“My instincts told me that Donald was smart and funny — an all-America good guy,” Ivana Trump writes.
Her children also contribute passages to the book, and Ivana Trump muses that her former husband may not be the only Trump to call the White House home.
“Maybe in fifteen years, she could run for President?” she writes about her daughter, Ivanka, before musing about her own possible title. “First Lady? Holds no appeal for me personally. First Mother? That could work.”
Ivana and the President have returned to far warmer terms. She writes that they speak about once a week and that she encourages him to keep using Twitter.
Ivana also said in a CBS News interview this week that she was offered the post of ambassador to the Czech Republic, her native country, but turned it down because she already has “a perfect life.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the ambassadorship post.
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