'He was nice but not very bright': Artist recalls awful steakhouse date with Trump who arrived in a Cadillac but made HER pick up the check (because he forgot his wallet)
- Lucy Klebanow met Trump in the 1970s when he was in his late 20s
- Went on one date with the businessman to a steakhouse in Brooklyn
- Said Trump was 'nice looking' but also 'boring' and 'not very bright'
- Because restaurant didn't take cards she was forced to pick up the check
- While Trump insisted he would pay her back he never did, she says
- For more of the latest on Donald Trump visit www.dailymail.co.uk/trump
Lucy Klebanow, now an artist in New York, recalls going on a 'boring' date with 'not very bright' Donald Trump in the 1970s (pictured here in 1976)
Nowadays he's one of the most recognizable faces in American, a billionaire businessman, and potentially the next President of the United States.
But back in the 1970s Donald Trump was just another preppy uptown New Yorker, hanging out in bars, and trying to score dates with some of the city's eligible singletons.
That is how Lucy Klebanow found herself on a 'boring' date with Trump in a Brooklyn steakhouse before he asked her to pick up the check, and never paid her back.
Writing in Salon, Klebanow, now an artist and furniture designer in New York, recalls meeting Trump through friends in a trendy Upper East Side bar when she was 23.
Klebanow, who says Trump was in his late 20s at the time, remembers Trump asking for her number and calling her the following day before coming to pick her up at 7.
When she arrived in the lobby of her building, expecting to find a sheepish looking boy, instead she only found a white Cadillac convertible sitting pulled up at the curb.
She writes: 'My date leaned over and said, “Hop in.” I didn’t know what to make of this. I lived in NYC and nobody ever picked me up in a car except to go to the airport.
'I was too surprised and flustered to be impressed. I felt like I was in a James Dean movie.
'If he wanted to impress me, a Cadillac wouldn’t do it, but if he got out of the car, and opened the door for me, then I would be impressed.'
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Dinner with The Donald: Lucy Klebanow tells how she was forced to pick up the bill at Peter Luger steak house after the billionaire forgot to bring cash
Once inside Klebanow recalls the interior was a garish cherry red that made her head hurt.
Picking up the in-car telephone, the first of its kind Klebanow had seen, she recalls Trump offering to make reservations anywhere she liked, so she chose the Peter Luger Steak House in Brooklyn.
Klebanow describes Trump as 'nice' looking and 'preppy', though added that he was 'not a conversationalist' and also didn't strike her as 'very bright'.
While she gives few details about the date itself, Klebanow did recall a moment at the end when it came to paying and Trump pulled out his credit card, only to be told the place didn't accept them.
She added: 'So, my big shot, Cadillac, phone-in-convertible boring date couldn’t pay for dinner. He was stunned and embarrassed.
Cadillac fan: Trump pictured in the eighties with another Cadillac car - complete with personalized license plates
While Klebanow was not impressed with Trump's attempts at seduction, clearly he improved his technique as he later wooed and then married first wife Ivana (pictured together) in 1977
'I said, “Let’s get aprons and do the dishes. It would be fun.” His face was horror-stricken.'
Klebanow was eventually forced to pick up the check herself, and while she says Trump insisted on paying her back the next day, he never did.
While Klebanow does not give an exact year for her date with Trump, the business mogul was just starting to make his face known in the city at the time.
In 1973, the New York Daily News recalls, Trump featured on the front page of the New York Times for the first time after the company he was running at the time, Trump Management Corporation, was accused of anti-black bias.
The accusations did not seem to hurt Trump's dating game, however, as he courted and then married his first wife, Ivana, in a lavish society wedding in 1977.
Trump and Ivana went on to have three children, Donald Jr, Ivanka, and Eric, while she also took up a prominent design position in Trump's corporations, helping to furnish the interior of Trump Tower.
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