Born Ivana Marie Zelnickova in Gottwaldov, a small town south of Prague, she was the daughter of Milos, an architect and champion swimmer, and Maria.
From the start her father encouraged her to become a competitive athlete, taking her swimming and skiing from the age of two.
By the time she was 12 she had been enrolled in a training camp for future international athletes - eventually becoming a member of the Czech Olympic ski team.
She has said in interviews that they were not poor, but that there was no prospect of bettering herself unless she left the then communist state. "There was no fashion, and no business stars," she said. "The pure idea of communism is a good one, but it doesn't work."
Through her gauche charm and determination, Ivana escaped the dreariness of her home town by making a marriage of convenience to an Austrian friend of hers, industrialist Freddie Winklmayr.
The union gave her a foreign passport, which allowed her to escape from the iron fist of communism, and so the world was opened up for the ambitious Ivana. Then, in 1976, newly divorced from Winklmayr and working as a model, Ivana met Donald in New York.
They met at the New York restaurant Maxwell's Plum when Ivana was lunching with girlfriends. He was managing the venue, which was part of his family business. They were married within a year, in April 1977.
Her dreams were fulfilled. For she has become wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice in her own right. As she says herself: "I came to America and I saw the houses, the cars, the bananas and the strawberries in winter, and I knew what I wanted.
"With Donald, I found them, yes? I may be blonde, but I was not stupid."
Stupid, no. Shy - absolutely not. Who can forget how Ivana marked the Millennium by pelting down the ski slopes at Aspen in rubies and a red full ballgown - all to promote her own line of jewellery, of course.
Ivana, who is big on self-promotion, has been preparing herself for the big day with private tango lessons so that her "first dance" with Rubicondi is a real knock- out. The groom, meanwhile, seems to have been doing his bit - by allowing the bride to do whatever she wants.
In the two days before the event, there were two big preparatory parties for the guests: one given by Palm Beach socialites Louise and Stephen Kornfeld and another, around the pool at Mar-a-Lago, given by The Donald himself last night.
Indeed, Donald looms large over the event, and his relationship with Ivana is an intriguing one.
Behind the scenes he has personally overseen the drafting of a cast-iron pre-nuptial agreement which aims to stop Rubicondi from getting his hands on any of Ivana's lolly should their married life fail to live up to its fairytale beginnings.
Cynics would say ***** doesn't want Rosano getting his hands on the £13million he had to pay to Ivana in their divorce settlement.
However, one immaculately placed source insisted: "Donald did the pre-nup because he and Ivana are still friends and he is looking out for her. It was signed off quite a while ago and so everyone is happy to go ahead."
The pre-nup is apparently so watertight that Ivana's lawyers have been "pretty much weeping in admiration".
Donald, of course, has experience with pre-nups. He contested efforts to annul his pre-nup with Ivana very vigorously during their 1992 divorce. Times have changed, though.
Despite Donald famously casting Ivana off in favour of mistress Marla Maples, and even ordering private detectives to watch her while contesting her alimony settlement, they are now bosom buddies.
He was said to be particularly anxious that Ivana protect herself and her assets, which is either testimony to their continuing connection ("We have souls together," declares Ivana) or proof that he is exceedingly jaundiced about the long-term viability of this particular marriage.
There may, though, be good grounds for his cynicism - for there is already plenty of gossip about the state of the Ivana-Rubicondi relationship.
Not only have the couple had several highly entertaining public rows during their five-year courtship, but last month police were summoned to Ivana's Palm Beach mansion to calm down an ugly domestic disturbance.
The bride-to-be was said to be "tired and emotional" and young Rubicondi was in such a fury that he was even, briefly, handcuffed.
Sources say they were fighting over the pre-nup which aims to protect her New York town house, St Tropez home, yacht, flat in London's Eaton Square and mansion in Palm Beach. Unfortunately, all this is far from uncommon.
In January 2005, Ivana locked her toyboy out of their hotel room in Aspen following a row. They broke up "for good" before Christmas that year, but she missed him and by January they were to be found in the Caribbean together.
They were spotted arguing in a restaurant in St Tropez in June 2006, and seen having a highly public tiff again in Paris last December; he stayed in a bar alone, while she moved on to a party with her friends.
Ivana likes to joke that she would rather be a babysitter than a nursemaid, but some friends believe that she is quite foolish to trust her heart to this much-younger man.
"Their relationship is truly fiery, it has always been tempestuous, but they have reached a point where they want to get married," says a friend. "They do love each other very much, though it can be up and down."
Others are less complimentary. "They've been fighting ever since they met each other, and the only reason anyone can imagine for why they are getting married is for the publicity," sniped one associate this week.
The pair were introduced by mutual friends, and Rubicondi seems to have immediately fitted the mould - handsome, much younger and willing to follow where Ivana leads. "I guess you could say that she wears the trousers," he once said, ruefully.
She certainly does. In her post-Donald life, Ivana is in almost perpetual motion, either travelling to make deals - she is big on lending her name to hotels around the world - or to keep her social life on track.
She has said they tend not to spend more than ten days in any one place. Rubicondi acts as her bag carrier, and allows her to get on with promoting the Ivana ***** brand ceaselessly.
"We are good for each other," says Ivana. "He always has a smile on his face. He's sporty, he's healthy. He's a great guy with a lot of talent. He's an actor and a dancer and a singer."
Hmmm. Rubicondi's greatest professional achievement so far is a non-speaking part in a film of the Henry James novel, The Golden Bowl. Indeed, he seems to have abandoned any thoughts of pursuing his own career, as a result of his peripatetic lifestyle with Ivana.
It makes you wonder who paid for her wonderful 13-carat diamond engagement ring.
Friends fear that Ivana risks a re-run of her frightful third marriage after The Donald, to Italian businessman Riccardo Mazzucchelli. As now, there was a lot of wrangling about a pre-nup. The couple were married in November 1995 at the Mayfair Hotel in New York. They split up 18 months later.
When it was over, Mazzucchelli sued her for the return of the engagement ring, which he got, with a small sum of money; luckily for Ivana, there was no "exchange of assets" because of the pre-nup deal.
Despite this, she seems quite determined to go ahead with the wedding today. "I don't need to get married to get the babies; I have them. I'm not marrying for the social position. I don't need to get married because of money. It just feels right."
You can only hope that the cynical instincts of ***** and her friends are proved wrong.
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