Marla Maples Didn't Get As Much In Her Divorce From Donald Trump As You Might Think

It's probably hard to imagine Donald Trump being with anyone other than the first lady (for us younger folks, at least). But the truth is, she's not the only person he's tied the knot with. Before Melania became his one and only, Trump was married to actress-model Marla Maples. Their union lasted for several years and produced their only child, Tiffany Trump — until Trump pulled the plug on the relationship in the late '90s. So, did Marla Maples get money in the Donald Trump divorce, at least? Glad you asked. Let's talk about their relationship and how things unfolded in the end.

If you don't remember, they met in 1987 after Trump threw a party in honor of the publication of his book The Art of the Deal in a moment that sounds like something straight out of a Hollywood rom-com. “I just think the first moment I met him, I had a sense like I had known him before,” she told Access Hollywood. “It was much deeper than just whatever you might feel. We had a sense of like, if you believe in past lives or you don't, it was as if we had known each other.”

The only problem? Trump had a wife and three kids. At the time, Trump was married to his first wife, Ivana, who is the mother of his three eldest children, Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric.

That still didn't stop Trump from apparently wooing Maples and beginning an affair with her, though. The fling was made public in 1989 after Trump tried to bring Maples on a family vacation, but unsuccessfully hid it from Ivana. The resulting scandal was tabloid fodder for months. Unsurprisingly, a divorce followed, and in 1993, Trump married Maples, just three months after she'd given birth to their daughter, Tiffany.

But the relationship didn't last long. The two split for good in 1999, after separating in 1997.

The divorce proved to be complicated because Maples, who wanted $25 million, had signed a prenuptial agreement.Vanity Fair reports that under the agreement, Maples was to receive $1 million if they split within five years, and an extra $1 million so she could buy a house. It also stated that Trump would have to pay $100,000 in child support until Tiffany turned 21, but if she'd joined the military, got a full-time job or signed up for the Peace Corps, the payments would have ended sooner.

The publication reported that Maples only agreed to the contract because she hoped that Trump would renegotiate later down the line. “We basically came to an agreement that for the first few years we would agree on something and then tear it up,” Vanity Fair reports Maples saying to a journalist. The report also says Maples didn't really have a choice but to sign it if she wanted to swap nuptials with Trump "which she desperately did." A source told the outlet that "when she traveled, she brought along her wedding dress, so that she would be ready at a moment’s notice if Trump said he wanted to get married."

In the long haul, it looks like that probably wasn't Maples' best decision.

Ultimately, it appears that a judge sided with the prenup and she got the $2 million she was set to receive. Yeah, it's not the $25 million she wanted — and it's not even close to the money Ivana Trump got after divorcing him — but in today's dollars, that would have been $3 million. So that's at least something.

And besides, it could have been worse. Right?