Ivana Trump's early days in Montreal

Ivana Trump caught the public imagination, as her face was paraded in print and on TV screens in the 1980s and 1990s as an aspirational trendsetter married to the media-friendly millionaire Donald Trump. 

Prior to becoming a Manhattan socialite, Ivana Trump led a more obscure life in Montreal as a model and ski instructor, cohabitating with a lover who made his living as a speed skier and entrepreneur. 

Ivana Trump came to Montreal in about 1972 to be with her lover George Syrotka who moved to Montreal from Czechoslovakia around the same time.  

The couple shared a passion for skiing and hit the slopes frequently at Jay Peak, where they shared a hill-side shack with several friends including Christopher Hyde, John Teare, Roman Halas as she coached the Jay Peak Junior Racing team, with others pronouncing her the best skier at the mountain. 

Ivana had made her way out of Communist Czechoslovakia after marrying Austrian  Alfred Winklmayr in a marriage of convenience that allowed her to be with Syrotka in Westmount. 

Ivana was considered sufficiently high-profile to be featured in a December 1975 Montreal Gazette newspaper feature article that focused on her dual-life as a prominent local model and competitive skier.The article described Ivana and George Syrotka as a married couple, even though they were never officially wed.

Ivana was a favorite in the Montreal fashion model elite, getting paid a then-impressive $45 an hour to in sessions frequently organized by freelance fashion coordinator Roberta Bolduc and often shot by photographer Serge Beauchemin of the Audrey Morris agency. 

Bolduc sent Ivana to New York City to do a series of tennis fashion shows in 1976 and one evening in Manhattan she went out the chic 21 Club  to fellow Montreal fashion models Donna Maureen Andrade, and Marie St. Amour when Donald Trump spotted the beauties and sent them a bottle of champagne and a card asking if he could be seated with them. 

Trump and Ivana hit it off and were married the next year, after she and Syrotka wrapped up their affair. Montreal designer John Warden designed one of her outfits for the occasion. 

Ivana's companion at the table that night, Donna Andrade, suffered a sadder fate as she was murdered in February 1977 in a burn targeting her boyfriend, a crime that was never solved.  

 Ivana bore two sons and a daughter with Donald Trump and helped out designing the decor of her with her husband’s hotels before divorcing in 1992. 

Ivana Trump remained in the spotlight as her life was discussed endlessly in daytime TV and in celebrity tabloids for many years. She sometimes visited Montreal, including in 1993 when she came to help raise money for a museum. 

After her divorce, Ivana was romantically linked to Westmount socialite Stratton Stevens, a millionaire of Greek extraction, who  dated her as the two took trips to St. Moritz in France to ski together. 

Sirotka continued skiing and also dabbled in property development, buying and selling posh houses in Westmount. 

Ivana Trump died in New York in a fall at her home on 14 July 2022. She was 73.