The Extraordinary Life Of A 91-Year-Old Beauty Queen

Krystyna later learned that her mother had died from malaria. Nothing was ever heard of her elder sister, Alice, who had also stayed behind in Uzbekistan.

“I think my sister is still alive if she’s healthy like I am,” Krystyna says.

Krystyna and Stanley had three children together but Stanley drank heavily, possibly as a result of his experiences in the war, and Krystyna was widowed in 1949, leaving her with three young children and very little money.

She began to teach children the dances that she had learned as a child, and in 1953 her dance troupe was invited to perform at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, wearing costumes that Krystyna had designed and made.

Before she left the UK, Krystyna had another child, Elizabeth. The father had proposed marriage, but she wasn’t ready to marry again, and says that a sense of curiosity took her to the US, where she arrived in 1955 with a fur coat on her back, a few hundred dollars in her pocket and four young children by her side.

There Krystyna built a new life for herself and her children, working for many years as a dental hygienist.

It wasn’t until she was in her late 50s, though, that Krystyna met the man who she describes as the love of her life, Ed Farley. They married in 1979 and have been inseparable ever since.

“I joined all kinds of clubs,” she says. “I was teaching children Polish folk dances, and I took groups to Poland to the international dance festival.”

But late in life she also embraced the very American tradition of beauty pageants, entering the Ms Connecticut Senior America competition for the first time at the age of 70.

That time she was second runner-up. At her next attempt, a few years later, she was first runner-up. At her third attempt, in 2016, she was crowned queen.

“You have to have a regular dress, you have to have a talent, then you have a gown, and you have to talk about your philosophy of life,” Krystyna explains.

“I have three or four different talents – I can read poetry, I can dance, I can do Carmen Miranda,” she says, referring to the singer famous for Chica Chica Boom Chic.