Her father, Stefano Maino, fought alongside Hitlers Army against the Soviet Military on the eastern front in World War II.Most of her adolescence was spent in Orbassano, a town near Turin in Italy and her mother and 2 sisters still live around Orbassano.Her school was famous for organizing various functions and she took part in most of them.In her childhood, she was very fond of Football and used to play football with the children of her neighbourhood.In 1965, she went to the United Kingdom at the age of 18.At the age of 18, she met Rajiv Gandhi first at the Varsity Restaurant in Cambridge in 1965. Rajiv Gandhi was pursuing his Mechanical Engineering at Trinity College at that time.At first, her father was very reluctant about her marriage with Rajiv Gandhi as he was a foreigner and belonged to an alien country to him.When Rajiv Gandhi had scheduled her first meeting with his mother, Indira Gandhi, in London, Sonia Gandhi was so nervous that Rajiv had to reschedule her meeting with his mother.Her first visit to India was on 13 January 1968 and she was fetched by Rajiv Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, and Amitabh Bachchan at the Delhi airport.Before her marriage, she was staying with the Bachchans at their Wellington Crescent House.