Melania does attend Ivana’s funeral following speculation she would give it a miss

Melania Trump attended the funeral of Ivana Trump amidst speculation that she would skip the ceremony of her husband’s ex-wife, but she did not look happy about being there.

Photos from the funeral showed Melania with a series of grim expressions on her face – she stared daggers at Ivana Trump’s adult children at times, hid her face behind a pair of large black sunglasses at others, and constantly averted her gaze from her husband.

She seemed to look left, right, up or down – seemingly anywhere but at her husband’s ex-wife’s casket.

Her evident discomfort was understandable, as before Ivana’s death at 73, she and Melania, 52, not-so-quietly feuded for years, with Ivana once declaring that because she was then-president Trump’s first wife that she was the real first lady of the United States.

‘Melania is there and I don’t want to cause any kind of jealousy or anything like that because I’m the first Trump wife,’ Ivana said during a ‘Good Morning America interview in October 2017, ‘I’m the first lady, OK?’

Ivana made the comments on the morning show while promoting her memoir, ‘Raising Trump.’

She also said she shared a close relationship with her ex-husband, which apparently included a direct number to the White House she didn’t use because she didn’t want to cause any issues between Donald and Melania.

Her comment infuriated Melania, who quickly issued a statement through her spokesman calling Ivana an ‘attention seeker.’

‘Mrs. Trump has made the White House a home for Barron and the president. She loves living in Washington, DC and is honored by her role as First Lady of the United States. She plans to use her title and role to help children, not sell books.

‘There is clearly no substance to this statement from an ex. Unfortunately only attention seeking and self-serving noise,’ the statement read.

Ivana, the mother of three of Trump’s children, passed away Thursday in her home in New York City’s Upper East Side after suffering cardiac arrest.

Melania remained noticeably absent from photos of the Trumps as they returned to New York City for Ivana’s funeral, leading to speculation that the Trump wives’ previous spats led Melania to shirk the engagement.

Melania was finally spotted at the funeral on Wednesday, laying to rest – in addition to her husband’s ex-wife – speculation about any remaining grudges.

In an interview with CBS’ ‘This Weekend,’ conducted around the time of her first lady comments, Ivana revealed her ex-husband had offered her the ambassadorship to the Czech Republic, but she said she turned it down so she could keep up her jet-set lifestyle and summers in Saint-Tropez, France.

She made headlines again in April 2019 when she diverged details about her daughter’s relationship with the then-first lady.

She claimed Ivanka, now 40, liked her father’s third wife ‘fine.’ adding she didn’t like his second wife, Marla Maples.

Ivana refused to even name Maples – whom she says contributed to the downfall of her marriage to Donald – as she discussed her daughter’s relationship with her stepmother.

‘She likes her [Melania] fine, because she didn’t cause me to break up the marriage like the other one – I don’t even want to pronounce her name,’ Ivana said of Maples in an interview with The Atlantic.

Ivana was a 28-year-old model from Czechoslovakia in 1977 when she married Donald, now 76.

The couple was married for 13 years and had three children – Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric – before splitting in 1990 after the real estate mogul had an affair with Maples.

The two got divorced in 1992 after an ugly public battle between Ivana and Maples, who was 15 years her junior.

Maples married Trump in 1993, two months before their daughter Tiffany was born.

The couple announced they were separating in 1997. They divorced two years later.

Donald began a relationship with Melania shortly after the pair met in 1998. They married in 2005 and Barron, Trump’s youngest son, was born in 2006.