Elvira Eliza Olinescu was an author, curator, critic and, above all, a survivor. Born in Bucharest, Romania, at the beginning of World War I, she and her family were forced to flee their village to avoid invading troops. At the end of the war, she returned home to the disputed territory between Austria and Romania. She would later earn a master's degree in history from the University of Cernauti in Romania.

In 1939 she married Vladimir Clain-Stefanelli, a postgraduate student in Rome, who specialized in ancient coins. The couple was researching coins in Germany in 1942 when Vladimir was arrested by the Gestapo because his passport had been stolen and "used by an enemy of the state." He was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp where he remained "a guest" until the end of World War II. Although pregnant, Elvira chose to join her husband in the camp. She later was released so their child would not be born in prison; however, after experiencing the bombings in Berlin, she returned to the camp, thinking it safer. She didn't realize Buchenwald, the site of a V-2 rocket factory, was a target for Allied bombings.

After the war, Vladimir found work in Rome with the numismatic firm. The family arrived in the United States in 1951 and the couple worked in New York for several years for Hesperia Art, then later for Stack's Rare Coins. In 1956 Vladimir became curator of the Smithsonian's Division of Numismatics; a year later, Elvira became his assistant. Two years after Vladimir's death in 1982, she became the department's first executive director.