Ivana Trump’s Post-Divorce Glamour
As the first famous missus of The Donald, she was walking, talking zeitgeist arm-candy. Then she got dumped and transformed herself into every scorned woman’s avatar.
As her ex-husband continues what for many is nothing short of a surreal bid for the Republican nomination—the list of people turning over in their graves is too long to list here—Ivana Trump professes her support for The Donald (while she has reservations that his current wife is equipped to be a First Lady). Ivana may be on the sidelines now, but her presence in Trump’s life was enormous, particularly during his Gordon Gekko heyday in the ’80s when they were one of the most celebrated couples in the country.
That’s around the time Elizabeth Kaye profiled Ivana for The New York Times. Kaye, whose work has appeared in The Village Voice, New West, Rolling Stone, and Esquire, among many others, specialized in long, in-depth profiles. (Earlier this week, I interviewed her for Esquire Classic, where she talked about her approach to immersion journalism, the sexual politics that occur between a woman writer and male subject, and why she is generally tougher on women than men.) She is the author of the fine anthology Men: What They Do, What They Think, and Why, and the best-selling Kindle Single Lifeboat No. 8: An Untold Tale of Love, Loss and Surviving the Titanic. This snappy take on Ivana almost 25 years ago will give you a small taste of Kaye’s talent (and you’ll be seeing more from her in this space in the future). Please enjoy, “Ivana, The Other Woman,” reprinted with the author’s permission.
—Alex Belth