Ivanka Trump became tearful while talking this week about the sudden death of her mother, Ivana Trump, in a podcast interview that centered on grief, family and what changes after a parent dies. She said losing a parent “hits different,” especially when it happens unexpectedly and after the pandemic years had already taken so much time away.
Ivana Trump was found unconscious at the bottom of the stairs at her Manhattan home in July 2022 and died the same day. The New York City medical examiner said she died from blunt impact injuries of the torso. Ivanka Trump, speaking on the Diary of a CEO podcast, said the loss pushed her to therapy as she tried to process what happened and keep steady for her family.
“I wanted to make sure I’m really good at being tough,” she said, adding that she had to work through grief she said she had been avoiding. She said her three children never had the chance to truly know their grandmother, even though the family has tried to keep Ivana’s memory present at home. Ivanka Trump said her grandmother Babi, now 99, lives with the family in Miami, calling it “a blessing to have her in our home” while they keep telling the children stories about Ivana.
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The timing of the loss mattered too. Jared Kushner, who married Ivanka Trump in October 2009, underwent a second surgery in August 2022, weeks after Ivana Trump’s death. Kushner had first been diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2019 while serving in the Trump White House, adding another layer of strain to a year already shaped by illness and sudden loss. Ivanka Trump said the back-to-back pressures left her needing support at a moment when family obligations kept coming.
Ivana Trump, Donald Trump’s first wife, married him in 1977 and had three children with him: Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric. The couple divorced in 1992. The family’s private grief was brought into the public eye again earlier this week when Chris Christie said Donald Trump once asked him to dig up damaging information on the Kushner family as he reacted to Ivanka Trump’s relationship with Jared Kushner. Christie said Trump asked, “Do you have anything more on the family, so I can break this up?” and said he was “not thrilled” when it became clear the two were going to marry.
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For Ivanka Trump, the answer to what her mother’s death has meant is less about politics than endurance: she is still talking about Ivana because she is still grieving her, and because the loss changed the family’s center of gravity in a way that has not faded with time.
