Marla Maples tends to arrive in a conversation the same way: as Donald Trump’s second wife, the headline marriage that ran from 1993 to 1999, according to Wikipedia’s biography of Maples. The less-repeated part is what she’s done since — theater, television, a Dancing with the Stars run in 2016, and raising Tiffany Trump largely outside New York’s gossip pages; here’s the documented version, the unresolved numbers, and the parts the tabloids never followed up on.
Born: October 27, 1963, Dalton, Georgia ·
Daughter: Tiffany Trump (born October 13, 1993) ·
Marriage to Trump: 1993–1999 ·
Reported settlement: About $2 million
Quick snapshot
- Born in Dalton, Georgia, on October 27, 1963, per Wikipedia’s biography of Maples. (the South China Morning Post’s 1999 court report)
- Married Donald Trump in 1993; the divorce was granted by a New York judge in June 1999, per the South China Morning Post’s 1999 court report.
- One daughter, Tiffany Trump, born on October 13, 1993, per Wikipedia’s biography of Maples. (the South China Morning Post’s 1999 court report)
- The exact settlement amount: 1999 press reports put it at about $2 million, but the terms were never fully public, according to the New York Post’s settlement coverage.
- The reported $25 million ask: repeated widely, but not presented as a verified award, according to the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong daily). (the New York Post’s settlement coverage)
- The reported $100,000-a-year child support: circulated by LoveMoney (personal-finance site), not established by a publicly cited decree. (the New York Post’s settlement coverage)
- Maples’s current marital status is not consistently documented. (the New York Post’s settlement coverage)
- A 2025 obituary-style page in search results isn’t corroborated by other mainstream outlets. (the New York Post’s settlement coverage)
- May 1997 — the separation reported by the New York Post at the time.
- June 1999 — a New York judge finalizes the divorce, per the South China Morning Post’s court report.
- 2016 — Dancing with the Stars season 22 becomes her most visible career rebound, per Wikipedia’s biography.
- Public appearances and occasional acting work continue through the 2020s, per Wikipedia’s biography.
- The $2 million figure will keep circulating as fact even though it began as a 1999 press report.
- Prenup details stay in “reported” territory unless primary court records surface.
The pattern in the cards is the same as the pattern in the full profile: the confirmed core is compact, and the speculative margin is wider.
Marla Maples at a glance
Six facts, one pattern: the reliable part of Maples’s public record fits in a single table — everything else is interpretation or spin.
| Label | Value |
|---|---|
| Full name | Marla Ann Maples |
| Born | October 27, 1963, Dalton, Georgia |
| Known for | Actress, model, TV host; second wife of Donald Trump |
| Marriage | Donald Trump, 1993–1999 |
| Daughter | Tiffany Ariana Trump (born October 13, 1993) |
| Recent TV milestone | Dancing with the Stars season 22 (2016) |
The pattern: it’s a biographical record, not a dramatic one — two birthdays, one marriage window, one daughter, one TV comeback.
What is Marla Maples doing now?
The question “What is Marla Maples doing now?” keeps surfacing for a reason: her tabloid era was loud, and her post-divorce era has been deliberately quiet.
What is Marla Maples’s latest entertainment work?
- Film, television, and theater credits spanning the 1980s to later projects, per Wikipedia’s biography of Maples.
- Dancing with the Stars season 22 in 2016 — the most visible recent television credit.
- Described in biographical profiles as an actress, television host, singer, and model, per Wikipedia’s biography of Maples.
Maples never left show business; she stepped out of the gossip pages. The credits kept coming — smaller roles, guest spots, theater — while her parenting life took center stage in California. The Dancing with the Stars run in 2016 was the moment the public rediscovered her without the tabloid frame: a contestant like any other, judged on choreography rather than scandal.
Has she appeared in recent TV or public events?
A 2025 obituary-style page in search results isn’t corroborated by other mainstream outlets. Lone aggregator pages sometimes outrank real biographies; treat them as noise until a reputable obituary appears.
Beyond that, the documented pattern through the 2020s is low-key: public appearances, occasional acting projects, and media interviews around family milestones rather than personal scandals.
Why this matters: “where is she now” has a quiet answer — she’s still working, just not at tabloid volume.
Who is Marla Maples’s daughter?
Is Tiffany Trump Marla’s only child?
- One daughter: Tiffany Ariana Trump, born October 13, 1993, per Wikipedia’s biography of Maples.
- No other children are documented for Maples in the sources reviewed.
Tiffany arrived before the wedding — born in October 1993, with Maples and Trump marrying that December. The birth date is the one family fact that never shifts between tellings of Maples’s story; it runs through every profile, timeline, and court report.
Who is Tiffany Trump’s father?
- Father: Donald Trump, per Wikipedia’s biography of Maples.
- After the divorce, Tiffany was raised primarily by Marla in California, per biographical profiles.
That California period is the part quick profiles skip: Maples took the primary parenting role while Trump’s public life stayed anchored in New York. Tiffany’s adult life keeps pulling attention back to her mother — each family milestone renews the question of who raised her and how.
The pattern: Tiffany is the connective tissue between Maples’s past and present — the one person both parents talk about consistently.
How much did Marla get from Trump?
What was the reported divorce settlement?
Reported settlement: About $2 million ·
Reported ask: $25 million ·
Reported child support: $100,000/year
The number that headlines most articles is about $2 million. According to the New York Post’s 1999 settlement coverage, that figure included money toward a home and sat apart from child-support provisions for Tiffany. Reports at the time said Maples had originally sought a far larger amount — often cited at $25 million — though contemporaneous coverage didn’t present that figure as a verified award; the same coverage compared her outcome with the far larger settlement commonly reported for Ivana Trump.
Why is the exact figure difficult to confirm?
- The prenup and settlement terms were never fully made public.
- Later breakdowns describe a prenup worth roughly $1 million if the marriage ended before five years, plus roughly $1 million toward a home, per LoveMoney’s prenup breakdown.
- That five-year threshold and related renegotiation details come from secondary reporting, not a publicly reproduced prenup, notes Nicki Swift’s prenup analysis.
- Confidentiality obligations reportedly restricted how much Maples said about the marriage and settlement, according to Nicki Swift’s divorce reporting.
The legal record establishes the outline — a New York judge granted the divorce in June 1999 after the couple had lived apart for more than a year — but the financial terms were never fully public. The reported prenup tied a roughly $1 million payout to the marriage ending before the five-year mark; that mark passed in December 1998, with the divorce finalized six months later. Every number in circulation today is a press estimate or a later roundup, not a court transcript.
The catch: the more dramatic the figure, the thinner the documentation. The $25 million ask and the $100,000 child-support figure both out-dramatize the $2 million settlement — and both rest on weaker sourcing.
The implication: the settlement story will keep regenerating until a primary document ends the argument.
Why did Marla Maples leave Donald Trump?
When did Marla Maples and Donald Trump separate?
- May 1997 — the couple separated, per the New York Post’s settlement coverage.
- June 1999 — a New York judge finalized the divorce, per the South China Morning Post’s court report.
- The legal ground: more than one year of living apart, per the South China Morning Post’s court report.
The marriage spanned roughly six years, with more than two of them spent apart — and the paperwork, by every account, was the easy part. The human record is messier.
What did Marla say about the divorce?
Marla Maples, in post-divorce interviews, has pointed to media scrutiny and personal differences rather than a single dramatic event. The legal file explains the mechanics; her interviews explain the atmosphere.
Public reports at the time told the same broad story: a tabloid-frenzy marriage that never settled into a private one. Maples’s own framing stayed personal rather than financial — a relationship that buckled under attention, with co-parenting as the lasting priority.
The pattern: everyone agrees the marriage ended; no two accounts fully agree on why.
Did Trump ever love Marla Maples?
Which wife did Donald Trump love the most?
- Trump’s public comments about his wives concentrate heavily on Ivana and Melania; his remarks about Maples are less extensive.
- Private feelings can’t be proven from interviews or court records.
The question keeps surfacing because Trump speaks about his first and third wives in sweeping terms and says comparatively little about the second. Some interpret the silence as dismissal; others read it as discretion. The record itself stays neutral: no sustained public testimony from Trump about Maples comparable to what he’s said about Ivana or Melania. Answering the question would require reading private feelings from a public record — which hasn’t stopped three decades of speculation.
Do Marla Maples and Melania get along?
Every search for “Marla and Melania” assumes a relationship worth examining — but no reliable public record documents how the two women actually get along. That’s a gap in the record, not a story.
The two women exist in the same extended family orbit, and that’s where the documentation ends. Their personal dynamic isn’t covered in the sources reviewed, and treating it as a settled feud or friendship overstates what anyone actually knows.
The implication: “who did he love most” is permanently unanswerable from the outside — and the lack of evidence about Maples has never slowed the speculation.
The settlement math, compared
Three figures, one pattern: the bigger the number, the weaker the paper trail.
| Reported figure | What it covered | Status of the number |
|---|---|---|
| About $2 million | Settlement plus money toward a home; separate from child support | Contemporaneous 1999 press report; not a court-confirmed award |
| About $25 million | Initial ask reportedly sought by Maples | Reported figure; never presented as a verified award |
| $100,000 per year | Reported child support for Tiffany until age 21 | Circulated by later roundups; not established by a publicly cited decree |
The trade-off: each figure moves further from a primary source as it grows — and the most reliable of the three, $2 million, is still only a press estimate.
Marla Maples’s life in dates
- 1963 — Born in Dalton, Georgia, per Wikipedia’s biography.
- 1980s–1990s — Builds modeling and acting credits in New York and Los Angeles, per Wikipedia’s biography.
- 1993 — Tiffany Trump is born in October; Maples and Trump marry in December, per Wikipedia’s biography.
- May 1997 — The couple separates, per the New York Post’s coverage.
- June 1999 — A New York judge finalizes the divorce, per the South China Morning Post’s court report.
- 2016 — Competes on Dancing with the Stars season 22, per Wikipedia’s biography.
- 2020s — Continues acting, TV appearances, and public events, per Wikipedia’s biography.
What this means: the documented arc is compact — Georgia, New York, California, a 2016 TV comeback — and the tabloid years are only a fraction of the full record.
Confirmed facts vs. still-unconfirmed claims
Some parts of Maples’s story are fixed; others are still moving. The lists below separate the two.
Confirmed facts
- Born October 27, 1963, in Dalton, Georgia, per Wikipedia’s biography of Maples.
- Married Donald Trump in 1993; divorced in 1999, per Wikipedia’s biography and the South China Morning Post’s 1999 court report.
- One daughter, Tiffany Trump, born October 13, 1993, per Wikipedia’s biography of Maples.
- Divorce finalized in June 1999 by a New York judge, per the South China Morning Post’s 1999 court report.
- Appeared on Dancing with the Stars season 22 in 2016, per Wikipedia’s biography of Maples.
What’s unclear
- Exact settlement amount — the $2 million figure is a press estimate, not a court record.
- Reported prenup terms (about $1 million plus about $1 million toward a home) and whether they match the final deal.
- Whether child support really ran $100,000 a year until Tiffany turned 21.
- Marla Maples’s current marital status.
- Personal dynamics between Marla Maples and Melania Trump.
- A 2025 obituary-style page in search results that no other mainstream outlet corroborates.
Why this matters: the gap between confirmed and reported is exactly where tabloid-era stories stay alive.
What the principals have said
The years after the divorce were a deliberate step back from the tabloid glare — parenting first, career second, very little public commentary about the marriage.
Marla Maples, as paraphrased from post-divorce interviews
Public comments about the three marriages concentrate most heavily on Ivana and Melania; remarks about Maples are comparatively sparse, and the record offers no sustained account of feelings about that marriage.
Donald Trump, as paraphrased from public remarks and interviews
The pattern: two people, two very different levels of public reflection — and neither version fully explains a marriage the tabloids never let breathe.
Where the record stands
Every number in the Maples story comes with a label: confirmed or reported. The $2 million settlement, the $25 million ask, the $100,000 child-support figure — three reported numbers that have outlived their qualifiers. For anyone writing the next profile of a Trump-family figure, the choice is clear: lead with what court records, contemporaneous dailies, and Maples’s own interviews support, or repeat the $2 million guess as fact and let the rumor mill do the rest.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Marla Maples married to now?
Reliable sources do not consistently document a current husband. Maples keeps her private life low-key, and most current profiles don’t address a spouse at all.
What is Marla Maples’s net worth?
No reliable net-worth figure appears in the sources reviewed. Estimates circulate, but they typically mix the reported $2 million settlement and reported child-support terms with guesses about career earnings that aren’t public.
Is Marla Maples a Republican?
No consistent public record of party affiliation appears in the sources reviewed. Her political views aren’t a documented part of her public profile.
How old was Marla Maples when Tiffany was born?
She was 29. Maples was born October 27, 1963, and Tiffany was born October 13, 1993 — fourteen days before Maples turned 30.
Does Marla Maples use the Trump surname?
Professionally, she is billed as Marla Maples — the name used across her post-divorce credits and most biographical references. The Trump surname doesn’t appear in her professional billing.
The same boundary runs through the Q&As: documented answers get stated; undocumented ones get labeled.
Related stories
Edward Davies Bennett is Editor-in-Chief and Responsible Publisher at Insight Britain, overseeing editorial standards, publication decisions and the corrections process.