NEW YORK — Ivana Trump, the first wife of former President Donald Trump and the mother of his oldest children, died accidentally of blunt force trauma to her torso, the New York medical examiner’s office said Friday.
Police were investigating whether she fell down the stairs, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Thursday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they could not discuss the matter publicly.
The medical examiner’s brief report did not specify when the incident occurred. Donald Trump announced Thursday that Ivana had died at her home near Central Park on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. She was 73.
Her son Eric Trump said it was a “very sad day, a very sad day” as he left his home on Thursday.
Czech born ski racer and businesswoman, Ivana Trump was born Ivana Zelnichkova in 1949.
She was married to the former president from 1977 to 1992, and they had three children together: Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric.
The Trump family became a power couple in the 1980s, and she ran one of his casinos in Atlantic City, as well as helping with the decor of Trump Tower. Their marriage ended in a messy, public divorce after Donald Trump met his next wife, Marla Maples.
But in recent years, Ivana Trump has been on good terms with her ex-husband. She wrote in a 2017 book that they spoke once a week.
Her death came at a difficult time for the Trump family. Two of her children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, and the former president were scheduled to appear in the coming days for questioning in the New York attorney general’s civil investigation into the family’s business practices. But the attorney general’s office agreed to postpone the deposition — a deadline for out-of-court questioning under oath — because of Ivana Trump’s death.
Associated Press writer Michael Balzamo contributed to this report.
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