Donald Trump Revealed The Real Reason For His Messy Divorce With Ivana Trump

Summary

• Donald Trump cited having Ivana work for him as the main reason for their 1990 divorce.
• Donald's parents were traditional and shocked by the divorce, despite the affair.
• Ivana continued to stay involved in Donald's businesses throughout their marriage.

When Donald Trump's first wife, Ivana Trump, passed away in July 2022 after she fell badly, it had been decades since their attention-grabbing divorce. People were also interested in who Ivana gave her money to after she died since she was one of Donald Trump's wives with a high net worth.

Donald Trump was unfaithful to Ivana Trump and began seeing Marla Maples, his second wife, while he was still married. However, there was another reason why he decided to end his first marriage. In this article, we will look at what Donald Trump said about why he really divorced Ivana Trump in a 1990s TV interview. We'll also take a look at what Ivana and Donald Trump's relationship was like.

Donald Trump Explained Why He Divorced Ivana Trump In A 1994 ABC News Interview

In 1994, Donald Trump was interviewed by the ABC News show Primetime Live along with Marla Maples. He told Nancy Collins, the correspondent on the TV series, why he divorced Ivana Trump.

After the broadcast said "Trump says he has learned from his mistakes in business and in love," Donald said:

"I think that putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing."

Donald said, "We'll do an educational program here, okay." He continued:

"If you're in business for yourself, I really think it's a bad idea to put your wife working for you... I think that was the single greatest cause of what happened to my marriage with Ivana."

As the ABC News special explained, Ivana began working at the Trump Casino located in Atlantic City, New Jersey. When asked why he didn't explain to Ivana that things weren't going well, Donald said, "I didn't think of it that way, you tend not to think of it that way."

Donald said:

"Ivana would get angry with somebody on the telephone all of a sudden who was at the casino and she'd start shouting and I'd say I don't want my wife shouting at somebody like that. I really don't want that and a softness disappeared there."

Donald continued that after seeing Ivana working at the casino, he thought differently of her. He said, "There was a great softness to Ivana, and she still has that softness, but during this period of time, she became an executive not a wife.”

In October 2016, Nancy Collins wrote a piece for The Hollywood Reporter about interviewing Donald Trump back in 1994. She explained that she traveled to Mar-a-Lago for the segment and that they talked for four hours. Collins wrote that people thought that Donald was going bankrupt then, but he said that wasn't true.

Donald Trump opened up about talking to his parents about divorcing his first wife Ivana Trump. He said that they have "traditional" views that people should only get married once, and he said that he agreed with that worldview. When Collins brought up that his parents must have had a hard time with him having an affair, Donald said that he and his parents got along great, and the media made the opposite seem true.

Donald also said of divorcing Ivana, "Those worried them the most — dating all the models, the divorce. They’re very traditional, married 57 years, 'divorce' was not a word in their vocabulary. The concept that their son might get one, unthinkable. The hardest moment of my life was when I told my parents I was getting a divorce. They couldn’t believe it."

Inside Donald Trump And Ivana Trump's Relationship

Throughout Donald Trump and Ivana Trump's marriage, which lasted from the late 1970s until 1990, she continued to work for his businesses. She held many different impressive positions over the years.

What Jobs Did Ivana Trump Have? (According to The Guardian)

• manager of the Plaza Hotel in New York City
• CEO and President of Trump's Castle in 1985
• in charge of Trump Taj Mahal casino
• House of Ivana store in New York City

According to The Independent, the former couple met at an Upper East Side restaurant in 1976. Ivana was a model who was visiting New York City to attend a fashion show, and Donald began chatting with her. After she saw him driving a limo outside the restaurant, she said, "He drove us home and we started to date."

According to The Guardian, Donald Trump and Marla Maples became involved when he was still married to Ivana Trump. Ivana explained:

“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.”

This would be a horrible moment for anyone to experience. The divorce process was intense since Donald's alleged affairs were brought up. As The Huffington Post reported, Donald pled the Fifth Amendment when this topic was mentioned. Ivana received a lot of money after she and Donald split up. According to Business Insider, she got $14 million in her settlement from Donald.

In 2017, Ivana explained to The Guardian that even though she and Donald had a terrible divorce several decades earlier, they were in touch once weekly.

In fact, in 2016, Ivana told The New York Post that she gave Donald tips when he ran for President. She said that he had always wanted to launch a campaign and explained, “Probably five years before our divorce, Reagan or somebody brought him a letter and said, ‘You should run for president. So he was thinking about it. But then... there was the divorce, there was the scandal, and American women loved me and hated him. So there was no way that he would go into [politics] at that point. But he was always tooling around with the idea.”