By Kate Stockrahm

Margreat Handley has had a lot to celebrate lately.

Not only did she just turn 71, but on October 11, 2025, she was crowned Ms. Senior Flint at the Mays Senior and Community Center’s Ms. Senior Flint “Age of Splendor” Pageant.

The newly-awarded pageant queen has since started a press tour around Michigan, speaking with East Village Magazine in early November before heading to Detroit for an on-air interview with WDIV. 

But when asked if all this attention was intimidating, she laughed and answered simply: “No!”

Handley explained that while she’s never before competed in a pageant, she participated in “oratorical competitions” in the past and spends much of her workweek speaking to the public as a prevention specialist with Catholic Charities and a fitness instructor with her “Amazing Fitness” program.

She added that atop multiple careers spent interacting with people (she also works as a cosmetologist instructor, owned a hair salon with her husband of 40 years, Leon Handley, and traveled the world as a “platform instructor” with L’Oreal Cosmetics), she was raised in the Baptist Church.

“Growing up in Baptist churches, they’re not going to let you sit down,” Handley said, smiling. “They’re not going to let young people just sit around and be in the pews… You had to get up and you had to speak!”

Handley said that while she’s been blessed with many passions in her life, her focus now, both personally and as Ms. Senior Flint, is fitness.

“Amazing Fitness is a program to inspire and educate seniors to live a healthy life as we age,” she explained. “Strength training is so important for seniors because it maintains their muscles.”

Handley is so passionate about fitness, in fact, that she showcased a workout demonstration as her talent in the Ms. Senior Flint pageant.

As for what she hopes comes of her reign, she told EVM that she’d like to inspire other seniors to live a healthy life and to encourage women over 70 to enter the next pageant.

“The requirements weren’t beauty,” Handley explained. The pageant instead had participants compete in interview, fashion, talent, philosophy categories, according to pageant organizer and Mays Senior and Community Center director, Gennois Wiggins.

“It was grace,” Handley said of what she felt was truly expected of competitors. “It was to be an inspiration for women of an age to flaunt – to go out and inspire other people to say, ‘It’s okay aging! It’s okay to age. It’s okay to see a wrinkle.’”

Handley, who has two children and four grandchildren and describes herself as a “devoted Christian,” said that as part of her duties she will go on to represent Flint at the Ms. Senior Michigan Pageant in July 2026. 

When asked what she will do to prepare for her next competition, she said she’ll do the same as she did for her first at the Mays Senior and Community Center: “It’s just good shoes, good shoes, good shoes!”

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in East Village Magazine’s November 2025 issue.