I'm proud of the way my body looks but it was still a shock when I went to buy my first competition swimsuit. My oh my! Icould not believe that they wanted me to wear something so skimpy on a stage. I felt embarrassed to walk out in front of a crowd of people but when I did, the audience cheered and hollered. My husband Collin is 82 now, and it was a big surprise when he found out too. Wewere married way back in 1956, when even amodest bikini was frowned upon.

I was born and bred in Baltimore, Maryland, and still live here today. At school I was a prissy kid, too concerned with the way I looked to enjoy sport. I wanted to be a nurse but ended up in a factory making telephones, earning some extra money modelling. I appeared in a couple of TV commercials and always tried to make my hair and figure look nice but I never went to the gym.

After my son Michael was born in 1959, my body started to lose shape. By the time I was 56, I was a well-padded school secretary who ate everything. One day, my sister Velvet and I were invited to a picnic and told to take our swimming costumes. Neither of us had been into fitness, so we felt overweight and uncomfortable showing off our bodies. That's what inspired us to start exercising and we signed up for an aerobics class. Velvet was more dedicated than me but our bodies started to tone up and look real nice.