Donald Trump

In 1977, he married Ivana Zelnickova and had three children from her, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric. The couple called off their marriage in 1992 when Ivana discovered his extra-marital love affair with an American actress Marla Maples.

In 1993, he married Marla Maples and they had one child, Tiffany two months before their marriage. In 1997, he filed for a highly publicized divorce with Maples which was finalized in June 1999. The divorce agreement allotted $2 million to Maples.

On January 22, 2005, he married Melania Knauss at Bethesda by the Sea Episcopal Church, on the island of Palm Beach, Florida, after proposing to her the previous year. They have a son together named Barron William Trump.

He was born in New York City, to a builder and real estate developer Frederick Trump and his wife Mary McLeod. He was one of the five children.

He had his initial schooling in the Kew Forest School, Forest hills, New York. At the age of 13, his parents sent him to New York Military Academy (NYMA) in Upstate New York where he performed well, both socially and academically; emerging as a star athlete and student leader by the time he graduated in 1964.

He was at Fordham University for two years before joining the Wharton School of Finance at the University Of Pennsylvania, from where he graduated in economics in 1968.

He joined his father’s company, ‘Elizabeth Trump and Son’, while still in college. The company focused on middle-class rental housing in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. He became deeply involved in the project and with a $500,000 investment, turned the 1200 unit apartment complex in Cincinnati with a 66 percent vacancy rate to 100 percent occupancy within two years.

In 1971, he moved to Studio apartment in Manhattan, New York and became involved with larger building projects. In the following year, he finalized first multi-million dollar real estate transaction with the sale of Swifton village in Cincinnati, Ohio.

In 1985, he bought Mar-a-lago estate in Palm beach, Florida and renovated the Barbizon hotel and 100 Central Park South.

In 1988, he bought the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

In 1989, he bought a fleet of Boeing 727 airplanes to form Trump air shuttle service. Unfortunately a helicopter crash killed three Trump casino executives which lead to big issue.

Trump also harbored political aspirations. In the 2000 elections he expressed his wish to run as a third-party candidate for the US presidency. In 2004 and 2008, he speculated about running for president in the Republican Party and in between in 2006, he considered running for governor of New York as a representative of the party. He again registered as a Republican in 2009 after having registered with the Democratic Party in 2001 and campaigned for it.

In 2010-2012, his involvement in politics intensified when he publicly announced his consideration of candidature for presidency again. However, his association with the ‘Birther issue’, a group that firmly believed Barack Obama was not born in the US, disparaged his political reputation. But he continued to be against Obama on various political issues.

In January 2013, he endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the Israeli elections. He was also a featured speaker at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).