For six years former beauty queen Marla Maples was known to the world as Mrs Donald Trump.
But despite their bitter divorce in 1999 - in which she is originally said to have demanded $25 million (£19.6m) for the abrupt end to their six-year marriage - the American actress and TV personality has now surprisingly come out fighting for her ex.
The ex who’s on the US Presidential campaign trail - despite facing a possible looming jail term, that is.
Trump, 77, will find out next month if he will make history as the first former President to be behind bars after being found guilty of 34 felony charges relating to historic hush money paid to former porn star Stormy Daniels.
Playboy star Daniels won her case in a New York City courtroom a fortnight ago after a jury believed Trump paid her $130,000 (£102,000) to keep quiet about an affair, just ahead of the 2016 election.
Trump denies all the charges, claiming he is the victim of a Democrat-led “witch-hunt”, has fallen foul to a “rigged case” and claims he has been subjected to a gagging order preventing him from “telling the truth”.
But this week, shortly after touching down in the UK with the couple’s daughter Tiffany, by her side, Marla Maples surprisingly came out swinging for her former husband. And in an overly gushing salute to Trump she opened up like never before about “The Donald”, recalling how she fell in love with the big-mouth billionaire of Manhattan, what he is really like as a man and even, whether she would actually vote for him.
In a surprisingly candid ballot box confession, she teased: “Would I vote for him? That is really personal. I believe in freedom and I have seen that we have had a lot of our freedoms taken away....”
With no indication of the irony, given his awaiting sentencing, she added: “He (Trump) believes in freedom like me. That is what I want to see for everyone. I do know that he would not be in this position unless he really cared.”
Marla’s giving this show of support to her convict ex to a group of students at Cambridge University.
The couple’s daughter Tiffany watched on silently from the back of the historic library at the Cambridge Union Society as her mother drooled over her former husband. This is the man who has denied numerous allegations inappropriate behaviour and sexual misconduct from many women dating back years.
But despite his public persona, Marla lifted the lid on a softer side to Trump, letting slip that the former President - who boasts to be worth $7billion (£5.5bn) - even came to the secret financial medical aid of her father Stanley, who died at the end of last month, aged 82, after suffering issues with his “heart and mind health”.
Marla first shared the news of her beloved father’s death on Instagram the day after Trump was found guilty of his hush money charges.
But she insists - which some may find galling to read - that there is a different side to the man everyone loves to hate, saying he is a man who always puts country and family first.
She revealed: “As a person, he is very generous. My father started to struggle with his memory and he said “If you need anything, then just let me know”.
“There have been other times when he has helped the family. He did not have to help my father as we were no longer married. But he really cared and he wanted to make sure my father was doing really well. I have seen him with his grandchildren. That is a part the world does not see and I think it is important to see the other side.”
In a statement that would make most New Yorkers wince, she added: “He loves America with all his heart too. It is not easy being in the position he is in. Of course he speaks his truth in a very strong way and he does not hold back. I watch the media convert things he has said and they give a half truth, versus a whole truth.”
And as if Trump did not need any more buttering up, Marla heaped on some more, saying: “It is not a world to choose to be in right now unless you really cared. Unless you really cared!
“In the world we are living in now we don’t know what is going to happen from one moment to the next. From everything I have learned, I have learned that love holds the answer.”
Love indeed did hold the answer way back when Marla first bumped into Trump in New York when she was just 20. He was 38.
Born in Georgia, Marla made her name in the Big Apple thanks to her credentials as beauty queen pageant star which helped her land starring parts on Broadway.
The rest, as they say in showbiz, is history with her going on to bump into Trump whilst working her way around New York’s social scene where she rubbed shoulders with Manhattan’s elite.
She became his second wife after his first, the late Ivana, vowed to “get everything” in their 1990 divorce.
But like all the women he has dated over the years, as soon as their relationship became public knowledge, she began hitting the headlines.
At one time she is even said to have told US newspaper The New York Post that sex with Trump was “the best I’ve ever had”.
But being part of the Trump world, did not always sit easy with her. Especially when she was the subject of some alternative facts.
She confessed: “Yes I was thrown into the spotlight at a very young age and it was painful.
“There were times I would just be sitting in the corner of my room crying, not being able to get up and go to auditions.
“When my name became so public, there was a lot of bullying and misinterpretations of truth and it was so painful.”
Today, Trump’s track record with former beauty queens is legendary - even his current Slovakian wife Melania worked as a former model before her days as First Lady in the White House
But despite being a former runner-up Miss Georgia USA and once being named Miss Hawaiian Tropic, Marla insists her meeting with Donald Trump was entirely platonic.
Still remarkably holding a torch, she gushes: “I was 20 when I met Donald. What made me fall in love with him? I don’t talk about past lives but when I saw him with his family, there was just a recognition.
“I tried to run from it for many years but we kept seeing each other (in New York) so I thought ‘You can't hide’.
“I would bump into him at a charity event, a tennis match or just walking down the street or I saw his car on my way to a modelling contract and I was lost. We kept coming into each other’s path until we said to each other ‘What is going on here?’
“I met him when he was 38 and he was very handsome but more than that I felt there was something we had to work out together. The most important was. of course, our child.”
Like all of his brides, Marla was soon whisked off to the dizzy heights of Trump Tower on New York’s Fifth Avenue and a full on glitzy wedding followed in the city’s Plaza Hotel - then owned by Trump - and reportedly attended by Rosie O’Donnell and OJ Simpson.
Today, Trump’s fun appeal as an 1980s New York playboy billionaire may have sadly faded thanks to all the scandals he has been involved in over the years.
But despite his ever perceived cruel nature in politics, Marla continues to believe that Trump was always the life and soul of the party.
Looking back on their early days, she says: “He was fun. We played tennis together, we went to church together. You know? We had some really good times but it was a very big world for me so it was hard for me to maintain myself in that world.”
Sadly, Marla’s time in Trump Tower came crashing down in 1996 when Trump is said to have fired his bodyguard, martial arts expert Spencer Wagner, after police are said to have found her and the bodyguard under a lifeguard station on a deserted beach.
Both Marla and Trump, denied an affair at the time but the pair separated in May 1997 and divorced in June 1999.
Under the terms of a said $1million (£785,000) divorce settlement, Marla is said to be bound by a confidentiality agreement regarding their marriage.
Today, Marla remains diplomatic about the split, only conceding she “found herself at the right time”.
Looking back on her time as Mrs Trump, she only says: “I was living under the illusion that I was going to have my own identity (whilst married). I really tried for a long time.
“We did divorce and I dropped the Trump name and I just wanted to be known as my own individual self. But I realised no matter how hard I tried, everything I tried on Broadway, what I did in a movie or my charity, it always came back to my daughter’s father so I finally let it go and said ‘I am not going to be trapped by the illusion of being separate’.”
Today, Marla sees her daughter Tiffany, 30, carry the Trump name and accepts how close she is to her dad - whether he is perceived as the hero or enemy of the people.
And if anything, Marla admits Tiffany is the proudest thing she took from her marriage to Donald Trump.
She remembers: “I was starting in Follies on Broadway, singing and dancing - eight shows a week - when I found out I was pregnant with this little angel.
“At the time I thought “I will have a baby when I am 40. I want a full long career and by the time I am 40 I will have achieved a lot of my career things”.
“She came at 29-years-old and there was not even a doubt in my mind. I knew this child came for a purpose.
“You learn unconditional love and it gave me more focus on what is important. Now my focus was making sure this child had every opportunity and knew that she was loved and cared for.
“Soon enough they are out on their own and you have to let them go and it is not very easy to let go of your daughter.”
In fact, perhaps the only lesson she learnt from being with Trump is never to let men have the upper hand.
Marla agrees things have changed since she was a young girl starting out in the beauty queen world, and in the wake of the MeToo movement, that can only be a good thing.
And in a message about strong powerful men seeking to take advantage of young girls, it seems fitting that she only has one more thing to say.
“What is my advice for young women in the world right now?," she says. "Oh my goodness. ‘Know yourself. Don’t get caught up in other people’s perceptions because you are special’.”
Marla, the feminist, adds: “As women we are beings and we are not objects for anyone. Right?”
One imagines there’s a few women, like Stormy, who might raise an eyebrow at that.