Marla Maples 'Never Considered' Herself Donald Trump's Mistress During His Marriage to Ivana

"I never considered myself a mistress," Marla Maples said on the ABC News podcast "Journeys of Faith with Paula Faris"

Photo: Getty (3)

Marla Maples and Donald Trump‘s relationship began while he was still married to Ivana Trump — but Maples says she didn’t think of herself as the future president’s mistress.

“I never considered myself a mistress,” Maples said on the ABC News podcast “Journeys of Faith with Paula Faris.” “I mean, that’s the truth.”

Trump was married to Ivana, with whom he had Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric, from 1977 to 1992 and to Maples, with whom he had Tiffany, from 1993 to 1999. Trump then married First Lady Melania Trump, with whom he shares son Barron, born in 2005.

“It was literally like, ‘Here’s my plan, and this is who you are.’ And my parents were told that ‘I’m going to marry your daughter one day,’ ” Maples continued. “Every step of the way, I was praying, ‘God, please be in this. Please be in this. I do not want to be part of breaking anything up that has a chance.’ ”

Maples said that she wishes her relationship could have unfolded on a different timeline.

“Do I wish more than anything that we could have had this relationship after the divorce papers were signed? Absolutely. With all my heart,” she commented during the ABC News podcast. “How much heartache would it have saved so many people if I had seen that piece of paper before we got involved?”

Marla Maples and Donald Trump. Tom Gates/Getty

“But it didn’t happen that way,” Maples added. “Everything had to happen in the way that it did to bring us to where we are now.”

Maples said that Trump would go to church with her when they were married. “It was really the biggest part of my life,” she said. “[It] wasn’t the biggest part of his, I wouldn’t suppose.”

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Nevertheless, she believes there is some faith in Trump. “I know that’s inside still. I’ve seen it,” she asserted on the podcast. “I would not have been able to love him … if there wasn’t that light, something there that has that faith and belief.”

“When Donald and I came together, I really felt that — I do believe there was divinity in it,” she said, noting that “there was a real purity” in the relationship. “I believed that together, we could do some very powerful things in the world.”

“It was two people that came together that truly loved each other in a period of time,” she said on “Journeys of Faith with Paula Faris.” “I wanted him to see how loved he could be for his soul, not for his money. And he knows that.”

In 2017, in her book Raising Trump, Ivana vented about Maples, writing that the latter “knowingly entering into a relationship with my husband, the father of three small children.”

“She actively participated in humiliating me in the media and indirectly put my kids at risk for months,” Ivana said of Maples, whom she titled “the showgirl.” “I went through hell, and then I was expected to be okay with her being around my children?”

In 2016, Maples expressed hope that Ivana could move on. “I love her kids, and if she’s holding any kind of resentment toward me, I really hope, for her sake, that she can forgive me,” Maples said.