Šymaniec studied at Beaux-Arts de Paris and then graduated from a humanities faculty of the Sorbonne.

In 1959 Ivonka Šymaniec married Janka Survilla [be], a Belarusian economist, activist and radio broadcaster.

With him she moved to Madrid where they ran a Belarusian language radio program supported by Francoist Spain.

[3] In 2013 she was awarded the Canadian Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for "her lifelong work in restoring democracy to Belarus".

One of her daughters, Maria Paula Survilla, (1964–2020) was a professor of ethnomusicology at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa.