In recent years, New Yorkers have rarely seen Ivana Trump.

When the city's former grande dame left her townhouse on the Upper East Side, every step was so heavy that she had to lean on her companions.

The cancer death of her fourth husband Rossano Rubicondi, Roman, actor and 23 years younger than her, continued to affect Trump last fall.

"I'm devastated," she said at the time.

"Mom was brilliant"

The entrepreneur and television personality married Rubicondi in the spring of 2008 at her second husband Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in the posh enclave of Palm Beach, Florida.

It was also the former President of the United States who announced the death of the 73-year-old on Thursday.

"Ivana Trump passed away at her home in New York," the politician and businessman said on his platform Truth Social.

“She was a wonderful, beautiful and amazing woman.

Rest in peace Ivana!”

Side by side, the former couple had set the tone in Manhattan's upper crust during the '70s and '80s.

During the day, "Ivana" and "The Donald," as she called her husband, developed real estate projects like the Plaza Hotel on Central Park, Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, and the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in neighboring New Jersey.

At night, the native Czech and the son of a building contractor from Queens dinged through restaurants and bars or attended charity events.

Meanwhile, their parents looked after the children at home.

Donald Jr., 44 years old, Ivanka, 40 years old and Eric, 38 years old are still fluent in Czech to this day.

"Mom was brilliant, charming, passionate and had a wicked wit.

She was a model of strength, tenacity and determination," mourned Ivanka Trump, who was chief White House adviser during her father's presidency from 2017 to 2021, on social media.

"We all loved her"

Ivana Zelnícková, as the deceased was called before her marriage to Trump, also brought strength and tenacity to America.

During her childhood in Zlín in the former Czechoslovakia, she learned to ski from her father and fought her way through competitions.

At the beginning of the 1970s she married the Austrian ski instructor Alfred Winklemayr in order to be able to travel outside of what was then the Soviet Union and its satellite countries.

The former sports student came to New York a few years later via Canada and a detour as a model.

She met Trump at a party.

"Stunning.

Blond.

International.

Shined brighter than an LED light.

She talked, made jokes and knew how to dress.

When she went out, she carried an orange handbag with matching shoes," summarized her friend, gossip columnist Cindy Adams.

In the spring of 1977, "Ivana" walked down the aisle with Trump at Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue.

"He loved her, we all loved her," Adams recalled.

After 13 years, at least her husband's love was over.

While the businesswoman took care of Trump Organization and family, "The Donald" discovered a new blonde.

During the Christmas vacation in the posh ski resort of Aspen in late 1989, Ivana also unexpectedly met Marla Maples, her husband's friend.

Attempts to get rid of the Georgia beauty queen through a heated exchange of words failed.

Maples became the second Mrs. Donald Trump three years after the encounter.

Two months before the wedding, she had already given birth to daughter Tiffany, the New Yorker's fourth child.

Previously, Ivana Trump not only won custody of Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric in the divorce battle.

She also asked her cheating ex to pay up.

According to media reports, in addition to $ 14 million, she also wrested the 45-room vacation home in Connecticut, an apartment in Trump Plaza and the right to live in Mar-a-Lago from "The Donald".

"Don't get mad, take everything," she told Bette Midler, Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn a few years later when she guest-starred in the divorce comedy The Devils' Club.

In the years that followed, her relationship with her former husband eased again.

Reinventing herself, designing fashion and jewelry, Ivana Trump became the uncrowned queen of American home shopping channels with her products.

On Thursday afternoon, property management workers found "Ivana's" lifeless body on the landing of her townhouse.

An autopsy is now to clarify whether she died as a result of a fall or cardiac arrest.