Scandalous Details About Donald Trump And Marla Maples' Marriage

Donald Trump's relationship with Marla Maples began on a scandalous note. Donald was still married to Ivana Trump when rumors he was having an affair with the much younger model hit the press in 1989. It's unclear when their relationship started, but Donald and Maples met in 1985, she contended in a 1998 New York essay. By December 1990, Donald's marriage to Ivana was over. In the divorce proceedings, the Czech-born model suggested the affair was the cause, arguing it subjected her to "cruel and inhumane treatment."

Donald's lawyer, Jay Goldberg, argued that he had simply stepped out in public with Maples and nothing more. "That's the cruelty," he sneered in court, The New York Times reported, "That it caused Mrs. Trump to have anxiety and sleeplessness." Goldberg also contested the date used by the media, emphasizing Donald and Maples got together in 1990. "That's important," he said. But the precise date doesn't seem to have mattered much in Ivana's mind.

In her 2017 memoir "Raising Trump," Ivana didn't hold anything back when describing the feelings she harbored for Maples over the years. "That woman knowingly entered into a relationship with my husband, the father of three small children," Ivana wrote. "She actively participated in humiliating me in the media and indirectly put my kids at risk for months." The relationship between Donald and Maples — who welcomed a daughter in October 1993 and wed two months later – became a lightning rod for scandalous behavior. 

Ivana Trump found out her husband was unfaithful from Marla Maples herself. Ivana, Donald Trump, and their three children were vacationing in Aspen, Colorado, in December 1989 when Maples confronted Ivana at Bonnie's, a restaurant at the ski resort. At least that's Ivana's side of the story. "This young blond woman came up to me out of the blue and said: 'I'm Marla and I love your husband. Do you?'" Ivana recalled in her book "Raising Trump." She continued, "I said, 'Get lost. I love my husband.' It was unladylike, but I was in shock."

News of the confrontation traveled far and wide. Maples initially avoided addressing the speculation. "She's not involved in it and she has no comment," her spokesman told The Washington Post in early 1990. "She has nothing to clarify." Later that year, Maples told Vanity Fair it was Donald himself who jetted her off to Aspen to spend the month, knowing his family would also be there. And Maples' version of what went down differs from Ivana's.

According to Maples, it was Ivana who approached her at Bonnie's, where she and Donald had been visibly arguing. "Then it suddenly became focused in my direction," she said. By that point, Maples believed Donald already had divorce plans in place. "It was good that the truth became known ... I realized that we had both been deceived," she said of her encounter with Ivana in her New York magazine piece.

In February 1990, the New York Post ran a photo of Donald Trump on its cover accompanied by the snippet: "Marla boasts to her friends about Donald: 'Best sex I've ever had.'" As Donald was still married to Ivana Trump, the quote took on a life of its own. Maples has always clarified that the outlet wasn't quoting her. "It's just an absolute, total lie that I said it," she told Diane Sawyer in April 1990, per The Washington Post. Maples consistently reminds interviewers of it. "I never said that, someone else said that," she told Page Six in 2018.

Indeed, the New York Post quoted someone claiming to be Maples' friend. However, the supposed friend is said to have been Donald himself. Former New York Post reporter Jill Brooke contended in a 2018 guest column for The Hollywood Reporter she was in her then-editor Jerry Nachman's office when Donald called demanding to be on the cover. "Jerry calmly replied, 'Donald, you just don't demand a front-page story. There has to be a story.'"

Donald knew what to do, telling Nachman, "Marla says with me it's the best sex she's ever had." That caught the editor's attention. "That's great!" he said, with the outlet noting that Donald hollered to have Maples confirm the salacious tidbit from somewhere in the background. Maples has refused to confirm or deny it publically. "Is it true? I'm not going to talk about that. The truth will come out, just not here," she told Page Six.

Marla Maples never had any interest in posing nude, but Donald Trump reportedly wanted her to. It wasn't just a casual wish, either. When Playboy approached Maples with a $1 million offer in 1990, it was her then-lover who reportedly helped the magazine arrive at the number. "Trump himself was on the phone negotiating the fee," a former Playboy editor told Glenn Plaskin of the New York Daily News. "He wanted her to do the nude layout. She didn't."

Maples remained steadfast in her beliefs. "I'm thankful for my body, but I didn't want to exploit it," Maples said. "How would I ever be taken seriously?" That wasn't the first time Playboy had gone after Maples. The magazine had been interested in featuring her since she was 16 — when they asked her and her mother to pose together. Because she wasn't of age, Maples would have needed permission. And even back then, there was a man trying to pressure her into posing.

"My dad was saying just go for it, what the heck," she said in the Vanity Fair interview. Maples didn't cave. "Even then I knew that wasn't the way I wanted to be represented." That remained true, and no nude photoshoots of Maples were ever published. "It's been very hard to break the mold, and posing in Playboy would have locked it into cement," she told Plaskin for Tribune Media Services in August 1990.

Donald Trump and Marla Maples were still on-again, off-again when she fell pregnant with Tiffany Trump — and he was reportedly unhappy about it. "It was like, 'Excuse me, what happened?' And then I said, 'Well, what are we going to do about this?'" Trump said in an unpublished 2004 interview with Howard Stern, released by Newsweek in 2017. Maples had a strong reaction to Trump's veiled suggestion. "She [Maples] said, 'Are you serious? It's the most beautiful day of our lives,'" he told Stern.

But Trump had a hard time agreeing with her. "I said, 'Oh, great.'" Chuck Jones, who worked as Trump and Maples' publicist before he was arrested for harassing her, told police he believed Maples knew what she was doing. "I met Trump at a party ... I said, 'One question. Did you want her to get pregnant?' He said, 'No.' As for Maples herself, getting pregnant was a planned operation," Jones said, Page Six reported in 2012.

Maples denies that version, contending she wasn't expecting to get pregnant but was happy it happened. "She came a little sooner than I had anticipated, and all I could say is 'Thank you,'" Maples told People in 2016, adding that the pregnancy was "the greatest unplanned surprise of all." For what it's worth, Trump is also happy they went through with it. "Honestly, I'm glad it happened. I have a great little daughter, Tiffany," he told Stern. 

Donald Trump's relationship with Marla Maples culminated in the media frenzy that partly ended his marriage to Ivana Trump. That's not what Donald wanted to happen. At least that's what Chuck Jones told police in the confession tape from his 2012 arrest that Page Six reported on. "I said [to Trump], 'Did you love [Maples]?'" he recalled. "He thought about it." Donald went on to say he believed his feelings for Maples were physical. "He said, 'You know ... I think it was lust ... had I the opportunity to do it over, I would have stayed with my family," Jones quoted Donald as saying.

Donald, however, has suggested his split from Ivana went beyond his affair. In 1994, he told ABC News his marriage began to suffer after Ivana came on as CEO of Trump's Castle Hotel & Casino. "I really think it's a bad idea to put your wife working for you," he said. "I think it's a really bad idea. I think that was the single greatest cause of what happened to my marriage with Ivana." Whether Maples played a part or not, Donald admitted his idea of a perfect life involved being married to Ivana while having Maples as his lover. "My life was so great in so many ways. The business was so great ... a beautiful girlfriend, a beautiful wife, a beautiful everything. Life was just a bowl of cherries," he told ABC News in 1994 (via Daily News).