Inside the private lives of Trump's three wives

Donald Trump and his first wife, Ivana, from Czechoslovakia, were part of the American social elite in the 1980s. They met when Ivana was already living in the United States. Their first encounter was at the Maxwell's Plum club in New York. Following this, Trump reportedly kept calling Ivana and visited her unannounced in Montreal, where she lived. He proposed after six months of acquaintance.

Ivana and Donald Trump got married in the spring of 1977 in Manhattan. At the behest of Trump's lawyer, they signed a prenuptial agreement before the wedding, which almost led to an early breakup. The issue was a clause which stated that in the event of a breakup, Ivana had to return all the gifts she received from her husband. The future Mrs Trump reportedly went furious over this. The clause quickly disappeared from the prenuptial agreement.

Ivana and Donald had three children: Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr. However, Ivana did not intend to be just a wife and mother. During her marriage to Donald, she developed as a businesswoman. She joined the board of The Trump Organization, worked on the interior design of her husband's properties, and invested in casinos in Atlantic City.

Their marital happiness lasted until Trump's affair with Marla Maples came to light.

"This young blonde approached me and said: 'I'm Marla, and I love your husband, okay?'. I said, 'Get lost. I love my husband'. It was very disrespectful, I was in shock," revealed Ivana Trump in her book "Raising Trump".

Their divorce was one of the hottest topics in the media. They obtained it in 1992. According to "The New York Times", Ivana received £11 million, £510,000 annually in child support, a residence in Trump Plaza, a house in Connecticut, 49 percent of the shares in the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and all the gifts she received from her husband.

She passed away on 14 July 2022 in her apartment in New York. Until the very end, she maintained contact with her former husband.

Although the world's eyes are mainly on Ivana and Melania, Donald Trump's second wife, Marla Maples, with whom the businessman had an affair during his marriage to Ivana, is somewhat forgotten.

Trump and Maples reportedly bumped into each other on Madison Avenue in New York. Their secret relationship didn't last long. When the media learned about their affair, Marla was blamed for the breakup of Donald's marriage to Ivana. Due to the media frenzy, she fled to Guatemala for some time, where she worked for the Peace Corps.

- It was horrible. They wouldn't leave my family alone. I wanted to make everything right. I couldn't handle it all," she later said in an interview with "People" magazine.

After divorcing Ivana, Donald Trump did not wish to remarry. Even though he and Marla were officially a couple, he didn't stop his dalliances. One day, Maples reportedly received a letter from him stating,

"I was in Europe, f****** every model in the world. My life was wild".

Trump and Maples eventually tied the knot at the end of December 1993. This wasn't without reason. Donald Trump knew that settling down would calm his investors, and his private life affected his performance on Wall Street. Their daughter, Tiffany, was also born, whom Trump's conservative parents called "a child born out of wedlock" due to the couple's lack of marriage. Marla Maples was so keen to marry Donald Trump that she supposedly travelled with a wedding dress to be prepared for an engagement and a wedding—anywhere in the world.

According to "Vanity Fair," Donald and Marla signed a prenuptial agreement which included clauses such as termination of alimony if their child got a job, joined the Peace Corps, or enlisted in the military. One of the clauses also prohibited Maples from publishing any details about their relationship.

In 1996, rumours surfaced that Marla Maples was having an affair with one of her husband's bodyguards, Spencer Wagner. The media revealed that Palm Beach police spotted Donald Trump's wife with his employee during intimate moments on the beach. Although both she and Trump initially denied it, their divorce happened in 1998.

After splitting from Donald Trump, Marla Maples received "only" £2 million compared to Ivana Trump. She moved with her daughter from New York to California, where she raised her alone for many years. Since then, she has appeared in many TV programmes and films. She is currently a speaker at the London Speakers Bureau, focusing on inspiring women and motivation.

Since 2005, Donald Trump's wife has been Slovenian model Melania Knavs, whom the businessman met in September 1998 during a party held at the Kit Kat club on Times Square in New York. Trump was still separated from Marla Maples at that time. When he asked Melania for her phone number, she reportedly refused.

In 2000, however, she participated in a nude photo shoot for the British edition of "GQ" magazine, which took place on Donald Trump's private jet. Four years later, she accepted his proposal, and on 22 January 2005, she married him. They have a son, Barron William.

In American media, Melania Trump is described as an ornament for her husband, which is partly his fault. Trump often "boasted" publicly about how wonderful her body is and how he is a "sexual demon".

From the start, she is considered the most mysterious wife of Donald Trump. She never spent much time with her husband, as described in Michael Wolf's 2018 book "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House".

"There were times they didn't speak for several days, even if both were at Trump Tower. She often didn't even know where to find him, nor did she particularly ponder it. Her husband moved from residence to residence as freely as moving from room to room. Melania knew little of his actions, equally little about his businesses, which occupied her attention only moderately. Trump wasn't particularly involved as a father in raising his four older children and showed even less interest in his fifth, Barron, born of his marriage to Melania. As the husband of his third wife, he told friends he had perfected the art of marriage: Live and let live - 'Everyone should mind their own business' - he said.

In 2014, when Trump first decided to run for the presidency, she was one of the few who considered his victory possible. After the 2016 elections, which he won, she stood by his side, though she did not participate publicly. She also delayed her move to Washington, only doing so a few months after the inauguration, as she waited for their then ten-year-old son to finish the school year.

Journalists noted that she was much less involved in her husband's latest presidential campaign compared to the previous two. In her latest interview with Fox News, she confirmed that she would move with her husband to the White House immediately this time.