A 2017 interview with Ivana Trump, Donald Trump’s first wife who died in 2022, has resurfaced online following the Jan. 29, 2026, premiere of Melania Trump’s self-titled documentary at the Kennedy Center. The $40 million Amazon production has cemented Melania’s status as one of the most powerful First Ladies in modern history, making Ivana’s words from nearly a decade ago feel newly relevant.
The timing created a striking contrast: While Melania appeared before Cabinet members and world press in Washington that night, Marla Maples — Trump’s second wife — was photographed socializing at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.
During the CBS Sunday Morning segment with correspondent Jim Axelrod, Ivana drew a sharp line between the two women who followed her in Trump’s romantic life. When asked about her feelings toward Melania and Maples, Ivana stated, “One is a nobody, the other is First Lady.”
Ivana refused to discuss Maples in any meaningful way during the interview. She referred to Maples as a showgirl who had never accomplished anything of substance in life. Axelrod observed that Ivana seemed to place blame for the affair squarely on Maples while effectively exonerating Trump from responsibility.
Her reasoning painted Trump as a passive participant in the infidelity. She claimed that women constantly pursued Trump, suggesting he received thousands of business cards from admirers each night and could have chosen any woman he wanted. According to Ivana, Maples was actively flirting and managed to succeed in capturing Trump’s attention, where others failed.
Ivana and Trump became fixtures of New York society in the 1970s. They married in 1977 and remained together until 1990, when their contentious divorce followed revelations of Trump’s affair with Maples. The couple had three children together: Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric.
The divorce played out in tabloids and captured national attention for months. Trump and Maples married in 1993 and had one daughter, Tiffany Trump, before divorcing six years later.
Despite the acrimonious end to their marriage, Ivana and Trump maintained a relationship for the sake of their children, who became prominent figures during their father’s political campaigns. All three of their offspring appeared prominently during Trump’s first presidential campaign, a development that clearly brought Ivana considerable pride according to the CBS interview. The children went on to take active roles in their father’s administration and business dealings.
Axelrod noted during the segment that while Ivana would never forgive Trump’s second wife, she harbored no similar animosity toward Melania. This distinction appeared to stem partly from Melania’s status as first lady, which Ivana seemed to respect as a legitimate accomplishment.
Ivana passed away in 2022 at age 73. At her funeral, Trump spoke positively about his former wife, describing her as someone who never gave up and took nothing for granted. He acknowledged her role as the mother of three of his children and the lasting bond they maintained despite their divorce more than three decades earlier.
The resurfaced interview offers something rarer than tabloid drama — an almost prophetic snapshot of a hierarchy that has only grown more defined with time. Ivana could not have known that the woman she called a nobody would one day be photographed at Mar-a-Lago on the very night the woman she called First Lady premiered a globally distributed documentary about her own life. The hierarchy she described so bluntly — one nobody, one First Lady — has, by almost any measure, held.