Former President Donald Trump paid respects to his first wife, Ivana Trump. He and his current wife, Melania Trump, joined his three eldest children at a funeral Mass in New York on Wednesday for their mother. Video / AP
Ivana Trump, the first wife of former President Donald Trump and mother to his eldest children, died accidentally from blunt impact injuries to her torso, the New York City medical examiner's office said Friday local time.
Police had been looking into whether she fell down the stairs, two people familiarwith 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 accident took place. Trump announced Thursday that Ivana died at her home near Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side. She was 73.
Ivana Trump at the Plaza Hotel on June 13, 2018, in New York. Photo / AP
This comes as it was revealed Trump was in such bad physical shape with an ailing hip two weeks ago that she couldn't even make it out of her house for a trip to the Hamptons, a close friend told The NY Post on Friday.
"There was something going on with her hip, she couldn't walk," said Zach Erdem, owner of the Southampton hot spot 75 Main, a favourite of Trump's that she planned on visiting earlier this month, the NY Post reports.
"She was going to come two weeks ago, but she was feeling bad. … She said she wasn't feeling well," Erdem recalled.
"She said she was having pain in her leg. … She couldn't get out of her house."
Her son Eric Trump said it was "a very sad day, a very sad day", as he left the home Thursday.
A Czech-born ski racer and businesswoman, Ivana was born Ivana Zelnickova in 1949.
Donald Trump and then-wife, Ivana Trump, pose outside the Federal Courthouse in New York, in May 1988. Photo / AP
She was married to the former president from 1977 to 1992, and they had three children together: Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric.
The Trumps became a 1980s power couple, and she managed one of his Atlantic City casinos as well as helped with the decor of Trump Tower. Their marriage ended in a messy, public divorce after Trump met his next wife, Marla Maples.
But in recent years, Ivana had been on good terms with her ex-husband. She wrote in a 2017 book that they spoke about once a week.
Her death came during a fraught time for the Trump family. Two of her children, Donald Jr and Ivanka, as well as the former president were due 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 depositions — a term for out-of-court questioning under oath — because of Ivana's death.
