Marla Maples and Donald Trump Relationship: Marriage, Divorce, and Family Timeline (2026)

Reading Time: 5 minutes

A clear, fact-checked timeline of the Marla Maples and Donald Trump relationship how they met, their marriage, the divorce, and where things stand now.

Marla Maples and Donald Trump Relationship: How They Met, Married, and Divorced

If you were around in the early ’90s, you probably remember the tabloid covers before you remember any actual facts Best S*x I’ve Ever Had, the Plaza Hotel wedding, the whole circus. That’s the problem with a story this heavily tabloided: the headlines stuck, but the actual timeline got fuzzy for a lot of people.

So here’s the Marla Maples and Donald Trump relationship laid out properly when it started, how the marriage actually unfolded, when the divorce was finalized, and what both of them have said about it since, without the recycled tabloid noise.

Quick Facts Table

Detail	Information
First met	1984; relationship became public around 1989–1990
Trump’s marital status at the time	Still married to first wife, Ivana Trump
Daughter born	Tiffany Trump, October 13, 1993
Married	December 20, 1993, at the Plaza Hotel, NYC
Separated	May 1997
Divorce finalized	June 8, 1999
Children together	One: Tiffany Trump
Current status	Divorced; both have described the relationship as amicable in recent years

How the Relationship Actually Started

Maples and Trump first met in 1984, but the relationship that made headlines began while Trump was still married to his first wife, Ivana. It wasn’t exactly subtle the two had a tense, witnessed run-in during an Aspen ski trip in 1989 that Trump himself later described as having “friction” in a 1994 interview. That confrontation is generally treated as the moment Ivana learned what was going on, and she filed for divorce in 1990.

Trump has said, looking back, that if the affair hadn’t come out, things might have just continued as they were not exactly a romantic origin story, but an honest one.

The Marriage: Step by Step

Marla Maples and Donald Trump Relationship

Here’s the sequence, since a lot of coverage blurs the order:

1. 1990 – Ivana Trump files for divorce after the affair becomes public. Marla and Trump’s relationship, on-and-off through several breakups, continues.

2. October 13, 1993 – Their daughter, Tiffany Trump, is born.

3. December 7, 1993 – The Long Island Rail Road shooting happens. Maples has said this tragedy pushed Trump to reevaluate his life and propose to her.

4. December 20, 1993 – Trump and Maples marry at New York’s Plaza Hotel in a lavish ceremony reportedly attended by around 1,000 guests just two months after Tiffany’s birth.

5. 1996 – A tabloid scandal breaks when Trump fires his bodyguard, Spencer Wagner, months after Maples and the bodyguard were found together on a beach in the early hours of the morning. Both denied any affair.

6. May 1997 – Maples and Trump separate.

7. June 8, 1999 – Their divorce is legally finalized, under a prenuptial agreement that includes a confidentiality clause about the marriage.

That gap between separating in 1997 and the divorce being final in 1999 trips a lot of people up plenty of articles say “divorced in 1997” when they actually mean separated.

What Actually Ended the Marriage

Marla Maples has spoken about this a few times over the years, and it’s less dramatic than the tabloids made it sound. In a Newsweek interview, she recalled that she and Trump weren’t on the same page about parenting and life priorities she’s described feeling like she was “playing a role” the marriage required of her, rather than living the life she actually wanted. It reads less like a scandal and more like two people who wanted different things once the wedding was over.

Life After the Divorce

This is where the “family timeline” part actually matters, because it didn’t end with the divorce:

– 1998 – Trump meets Melania Knauss, his future third wife, while his divorce from Maples is still being finalized.

– January 2005 – Trump and Melania marry; their son Barron is born in 2006.

– 2008 – In a sign of how things settled between the exes, Maples’s fourth marriage (to Italian actor Rossano Rubicondi) took place at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and Trump attended.

– 2024 – Maples publicly defended Trump on social media during his presidential campaign, calling attacks on him “horrific lies,” and in a separate interview said she’s forgiven “anything from the past” between them, describing marriage as hard enough without playing it out in the media.

– Tiffany Trump grew up largely out of the spotlight compared to her older half-siblings, eventually building her own adult life and public appearances alongside both parents.

A Common Mistake People Make With This Timeline

The biggest one: assuming the marriage collapsed the moment the tabloid bodyguard story broke in 1996. In reality, that scandal came and went without ending things immediately the actual separation didn’t happen until May 1997, over a year later, and even then the legal divorce dragged on for two more years. The tabloid moment and the actual breakup weren’t the same event.

FAQs

When did Marla Maples and Donald Trump get married?

December 20, 1993, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, two months after their daughter Tiffany was born.

When did they divorce?

They separated in May 1997, and the divorce was legally finalized on June 8, 1999.

Do Marla Maples and Donald Trump have children together?

Yes, one daughter, Tiffany Trump, born October 13, 1993.

Are Marla Maples and Donald Trump on good terms now?

Based on Maples’s own public comments in recent years, yes she’s described the relationship as amicable and said she’s forgiven past issues between them.

Was Donald Trump married to someone else when the relationship with Marla Maples became public?

Yes, he was still married to his first wife, Ivana Trump, when the relationship became public in the late 1980s.

Final Thoughts

Strip away the tabloid framing and what’s left is a fairly human story: a relationship that started messily, a marriage that lasted about four years before the split and two more years of legal proceedings after that, and two people who by their own accounts decades later ended up in a more peaceful place than the headlines ever suggested at the time. The timeline holds up better than the myth around it.

Tazeen

C0-Founder and Editor
Tazeen and Arzoo are the Co-Founders and Editors of THE NEWSTER. They specialize in covering world news, technology, weather, business, and trending stories. Their mission is to deliver accurate, timely, and well-researched journalism while making complex topics clear, reliable, and easy for readers to understand.