Ivana Trump was seen the night before her death ordering soup from a local restaurant, one of her favorite dinner spots, according to restaurant owner and friend Paolo Alavian.
The 73-year-old was with a personal health aide when she stopped by Alavian’s restaurant, Altesi Ristorante, in the New York’s Upper East Side at around 6 p.m. Wednesday. Trump reportedly had a health aide with her fairly regularly in recent months, particularly on evening walks.
Alavian ran into Trump while she was outside the restaurant, and exchanged a few words. He said that her demeanor was “very very normal,” though she appeared tired.
“She did not come in,’’ Alavian said. “I bumped into her outside. I said, ‘Señora, how are you? Good?’ She said, ‘I just went for my walk,’ and we chat couple of minutes as a common thing we always [do].”
“You could feel a little bit of tiredness but … she never complained about anything, never mentioned anything,’’ the owner said of Ivana, who died Thursday.
Trump ordered soup to go and had it delivered to her home nearby.
“She loved soup. She always had soup. Carrot soup was the best. She got lentil, carrot. … She always wants soup,’’ he said.
Alavian noted that on his birthday, some weeks past, she had come to wish him well but that she had been unable to walk up the front steps.
“They called me from the restaurant to go out because she has difficulty to get inside with the steps, and I just simply hug, and she said, ‘I just wish you happy birthday,’” Alavian said. “The biggest hug I got on my birthday, I was extremely pleased.’’
Zach Erdem, owner of another local restaurant, 75 Main, told The New York Post that Ivana’s hip had been bothering her the past several weeks.
“There was something going on with her hip, she couldn’t walk,” Erdem told the Post. “She was going to come two weeks ago, but she was feeling bad. She said she wasn’t feeling well. She said she was having pain in her leg. She couldn’t get out of her house.”
Thomas Makkos, the owner of Nello Restaurant, another of Ivana’s favorite Manhattan eateries, said she was never quite the same after the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Makkos said that, at the end of 2021, “She aged in a way you were not used to…She aged very rapidly the last one year.”
He last saw her a few months ago, and, “She seemed a little down, she seemed frail…She had difficulty walking. We had to help her home,’’ Makkos said.
Ivana Trump died Thursday due to blunt force trauma and injuries to her torso from a fall, according to the Office of the New York City Chief Medical Examiner. She was found unconscious at the bottom of the stairs in her apartment.
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