She escaped Communist Czechoslovakia, defined the greed-is-good era of New York City, wedded and warred with The Donald, and chased love with a series of “freaky Italians.” From markpseal: it was Ivana, all along, who gilded the Trump name.
She is alone in her seven-story East 64th Street town house, atop the steep, spiraling stairs that friends and family have warned could kill her. Tomorrow, July 15, 2022, she is scheduled to fly to St.-Tropez, her first flight since the isolation of COVID. No one knows when she takes her final step, but some will find comfort when her body is reportedly found in pajamas, with a coffee cup, instead of a Champagne flute, nearby.
Her true feelings would come pouring out in the New York atelier of her longtime fashion designer Marc Bouwer, to whom she had come for a fitting on January 11, 2017, nine days before Trump’s inauguration. Her first wedding, to “an Austrian guy” named Alfred Winklmayr, 1971; an early modeling shot, 1971; Ivana’s hometown, Gottwaldov, 1949.The Oprah Winfrey Show,
Under her influence, The Donald traded his burgundy Queens suits for Brioni, and he and Ivana ascended from developers to stars. “In a decade of glitz, they were the glitziest; in a decade of greed, they were the greediest,” reportedThirteen years and three children later, the fairy tale fractured, spawning the decade’s biggest tabloid divorce scandal. Then Ivana staged an explosive comeback, fueled by the realization that her first name was as powerful as her last.
She meets the competitive skier George Syrovatka at 14 and starts dating him at 17. When the Communists relax restrictions during the Prague Spring of the 1960s, they begin traveling together. “She has acquired the taste of the Western world: freedom, fashion, money,” Syrovatka will remember. She models, she acts, she wins roles in Czech movies and comparisons to Brigitte Bardot. “And she changed her brown hair to blond to look more like her,” says Syrovatka.
She stays for a time with an aunt and uncle in Toronto. They take her on a Caribbean cruise, where, for a shipside costume party, she dresses as a Playboy Bunny.
Trump, whose whole life has been all about him, is suddenly all about Ivana, gushing to friends and family: “Have you ever seen anybody more beautiful? You know she speaks French, Russian, and Czech. Do you know that she is the greatest skier in the world?” She becomes pregnant on their honeymoon with Don Jr.; Ivanka and Eric follow in rapid succession. “I would give the birth and I would be at my office two days later,” she tellsShe becomes a devoted mom, whose family is her “number one priority.”Vanity Fair Cover: Eric Boman/Courtesy Peter Schlsinger. Vogue Cover: Patrick Demarchelier.
Until she didn’t. Some said she began to aspire to things he despised: society, charity boards, fashion shows, grand balls, and grand people. “The phonies,” Trump called them. “He didn’t want a copilot,” one longtime Trump observer will later say. “He wanted a cheerleader.”The divorce sweeps the world. A tawdry romance novel sprung to life, it opens with Trump and his mistress Marla Maples creasing the sheets in Trump-owned hotels. Everyone seems to know except Ivana.
Marla, in a black ski suit, approaches Ivana, in red and pink, and delivers a line that, as an aspiring actor, she has surely rehearsed: “I’m Marla and I love your husband. Do you?”Then, as she has done all her life, Ivana charges. Not at Moolah—at The Donald. “We were halfway through lunch, and she’s coming toward us, screaming, ‘You no good son of a bitch!’ ” says someone who was at Trump’s table. Trump intercepts her halfway across the crowded room. “And she’s just flailing on him.
The TV studio lights beat down upon her now famous hairstyle as she butchers the King’s English and sells a king’s ransom in downmarket clothes and costume jewelry to Home Shopping Network viewers in the US, UK, and Canada. “Ahb-so-LUTE-ly fahn-TAS-tic!” she seems to say of each and every item, from the $49.95 hoop earrings to the $280 Ivana women’s tuxedo that smashes HSN records.
Then Lieberman returns to his wife, and Ivana moves on to the first of her “freaky Italians,” as she will call them. “We went to see Wayne Newton, and he came out onstage and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, my dear friendis here!’ Riccardo got up and left and we never saw him again. That was the end of the marriage,” says Haskell.
Then, on December 23, 2005, Roffredo goes to visit his mother in the family home, a castle in Tuscany. Driving through the frost in a rental car, he falls asleep at the wheel and runs off the road. The car rolls over several times and Roffredo, who suffers multiple head injuries, is dead at 52. “Rubicondi was a nobody,” Gargia will recall. “Very good-looking. Amusing. He tried to go all the places in fashion. To know people. But without one penny.”
That’s when Rubicondi turns up again. “Finally, one night she was drunk and she brought him on the boat,” says Gargia. “The day after, she told me, ‘I’m so happy. He’s so nice.’ ” Rubicondi learns to speak English, his deep, booming baritone filling the drawing rooms and dance floors of the Upper East Side, St.-Tropez, Aspen, and Gstaad, always with the lady paying. “Signora was a-financial support for him,” says Paolo Alavian, owner of Ivana’s regular neighborhood restaurant Ristorante Altesi.“He was like a lion in a cage,” says his friend Roberto Manfe. “He couldn’t be who he wanted to be: a businessman.
Ivana still believes in the impossible: “She honestly believed that if she married Rossano, he might start behaving himself, and he would feel more secure,” says her longtime London friend, adviser, and agent, Liz Brewer. “But that was unfortunately not the case.” They are staying on a boat near St.-Tropez. Rubicondi has left for the evening, returning “like always at 4 a.m.,” says Brandstetter. The ship soon sets sail. “Ivana checked Rossano’s bag and she found a condom. She said, ‘Why do you have a condom? With me you are not doing anything!’ She called the captain and said, ‘Stop the cruise!’ She wanted to leave Rossano in the middle of the ocean.”
Needing money, he calls Ivana from Italy in 2020 to tell her that he is sick. She flies him back to New York, and the final scenes of her saga begin.“Paolo, tell this freaky Italian what I want,” she tells Alavian at Ristorante Altesi, which becomes the couple’s second living room. “And I knew it was for Rossano to stop smoking,” he says. “She would say, ‘Stop smoking and you can have anything you want.’ ”stop. Not the daily pack of Marlboro Reds.
The next morning, he gets a call from his staff. “Something happened at La Signora’s house. A lot of people. A police van.”
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Trump lawsuit: New York AG Letitia James has 'Trump Derangement Syndrome'The former president is suing the New York attorney general for what Trump calls a 'policy of intimidation' in her investigation into his business practices.
Read more »
Litany of Trump legal entanglements grows ever longer as Trump Org criminal trial beginsRachel Maddow runs through the list of lawsuits, investigations and criminal cases in Donald Trump's orbit, the latest of which is the criminal trial of his company, the Trump Organization.
Read more »
Donald Trump reaches settlement with protesters who allege they were assaulted by his securityFormer President Donald Trump settled a civil lawsuit Wednesday that alleged his security guards violently assaulted protesters outside Trump Tower in 2015. The case, brought by Efrain Galicia and four other protesters of Mexican origin against Trump and his head of security, Keith Schiller, was in the middle of jury selection in Bronx Supreme Court when the parties came to a confidential agreement. Video from the September 2015 rally appeared to show Schiller smacking Galicia in the face after he reached for a sign that said 'Trump: Make America Racist Again.'
Read more »
Trump expected to launch presidential campaign shortly after midtermsAides to the former president are making quiet preparations for a 2024 presidential campaign that could be launched soon after next week’s midterm elections.
Read more »
Executive: Trump Organization changed pay practices post-electionDonald Trump’s election as president was a wake-up call — not just for the political establishment, but also for the company synonymous with him, his wealth and his fame, a top executive testified Tuesday.
Read more »