An unexpected matchmaker. Wendi Deng was responsible for getting Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner back together following the now-married couple’s brief split in 2008.
According to The New Yorker’s August 22 profile of the pair, Deng, now 47, invited Trump, 34, and Kushner, 35, on her and then-husband Rupert Murdoch’s yacht in an attempt to reconcile their broken relationship. However, Deng didn’t alert the real estate heirs that she had invited both of them.
After Trump and Kushner broke up over their religious differences (Kushner is Jewish and Trump was Presbyterian at the time), Deng called Kushner (publisher of The New York Observer) and said, “You’re working so hard. Come with Rupert and me on the boat for the weekend,” according to The New Yorker.
Once Kushner arrived, he reportedly found that Trump had also been invited on the family’s boat.
Things apparently went well, as the couple tied the knot in a traditional Jewish ceremony in October 2009. Prior to the wedding, Trump underwent a rigorous process to convert to Judaism, which included “extensive study of the Torah, the laws of Judaism and a deep commitment to religious observance,” The New Yorker reports.
Trump and Kushner now have three children, Arabella, 5, Joseph, 2, and Theodore, 4 months.
As previously reported, the former Apprentice boardroom judge — who is the daughter of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his first wife, Ivana Trump — and Deng recently went on a trip to Dubrovnik, Croatia, where the pals went sightseeing together.
Us Weekly exclusively revealed in March that Deng is now dating Russian president Vladimir Putin.