Early Years
Ivana was born to Miloš and Marie (née Francová) in Gottwaldov, Czechoslovakia, now Zlín, Czech Republic. From a very young age, her father nurtured and encouraged her skiing talent. In 1972, Ivana Zelníčková was selected as an alternate on the 1972 Czechoslovak Olympic Ski Team which allowed her several opportunities to travel outside the Communist Bloc. A year earlier, she married Austrian skier, Alfred Winklmayr, in order to obtain a foreign passport so that Communist leaders would not deem her a defector.
In the early 1970s she earned a master's degree in physical education from Charles University of Prague. In 1975 she left Czechoslovakia for Canada to be with a childhood friend, George Syrovatka, who owned a ski boutique there. For the following two years she lived in Montreal and worked as a model for some of Canada's top fur companies. In 1976 she divorced Winklmayr, left Syrovatka and moved to New York to promote the Montreal Olympics. It was in New York that she met Donald J. Trump, son of prominent real estate developer Fred Trump.
Read more about this topic: Ivana Trump
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early and/or years:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
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“In the end we beat them with Levi 501 jeans. Seventy-two years of Communist indoctrination and propaganda was drowned out by a three-ounce Sony Walkman. A huge totalitarian system ... has been brought to its knees because nobody wants to wear Bulgarian shoes.... Now they’re lunch, and we’re number one on the planet.”
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