From the Alvi and Rosalie Sara Check studio.

PBS Kansas presents Empowering Seniors.

Welcome to Empowering Seniors.

I'm your host, Katherine Ambrose.

Today we're talking abou reinvention and aging your way.

Meet Valerie van de silver, who reinvented and reinvigorated her life at the age of 74, starting a Los Angeles radio show called Always Ageless.

And she's learned so much since then.

Valerie, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

I'm so glad to be here.

Well, I am delighted that you flew here to Kansas to be part of the show.

Now, of course, the show's called Empowering Seniors, and that's exactly what we want to d is educate, equip and empower.

Uplift and inspire.

And so you're the perfect person.

I am I'm all of those.

Yeah, absolutely.

So appreciate you so much.

Oh thank you.

So you were in real estate all your life.

I was, and what in the world were you thinking?

Starting a radio show in your 70s?

That's a really good question.

I ran into you, Katherine.

And what happened is that in January of 24, I kind of thought, what am I going to do this another year?

How am I going?

You know, we've been out of Covid.

What am I going to do to re invent myself and make my life in real estate interesting?

And, you know, something had to happen as I grew older and my peer group in real estate was a lot of younger people.

They would come up to me and say, how old are you?

And I was a little bit bothered by that at that.

What difference does it make?

And Catherine, honestly I was worried that if they knew how old I was, they would think differently of me.

And one day I found you and I went onto your call in the morning and you had said go start a radio show.

I had been the guest on a radio show in California regularly, the man named Jay, and he had a retirement show and he passed away.

And when he passed away the radio station called me and said, would you like to have a show because everyone loved you when you were a guest on Jay's show?

It's about, what would I talk about?

They said, well, think about it.

And a couple of weeks later, they called me back and said, would you like to do a show?

I said, yes.

Today I'm going to do a show.

So I signed up to do a show.

No idea what it would be or what the topic would be.

No, I didn't want just a real estate show and they didn't want to show that.

Just talked about how people needed to have a will and trust and all of those things.

So I came up with the name of always Ageless because that's what I wanted to be.

I didn't want my age to be any issue with whatever I was doing in my life, and I didn't want people to look at me and make a judgment about me based on my age.

it seems to me that sometime some people are among the oldest in their profession.

Sometimes they start to feel invisible, judged.

They get asked when are you going to retire?

And people can really be shaken by that.

And how did this change things up for you?

Change your energy saying yes to the radio show.

Well, it's interesting tha you mention that because I do.

I'm a property manager and I was managing a property and there was a new owner that came in and they said, you know, we don't think we want you to be our manager because we don't know how long you're going to be around.

And I some people could have been hurt and crushed.

I was angry.

Oh, I was angry.

Yeah.

Because I will be around for a very long time.

So how did the radio show change me?

It's.

It gave me the opportunity to feel really empowered.

And at first I thought, oh, no one will want to be a guest on my radio show.

But that's not true, because people do want to tell their own story as well.

And my show, I wanted to be about people who were doing really great things in their later years.

Whatever that meant.

And I interviewed a couple who had moved to Arizona, started a real estate career in their retirement years, and still are absolutely crushing it.

And I wanted to find people wh were doing really great things in their later years, which I've been able to do.

And it made me feel more powerful.

Gave me bravery, confidence again that there was a place for me where I could do something besides just compete among the C of other real estate agents.

And now it's made you stand out.

It has.

And people across the country know who Valerie Vander Silver is.

They do.

And it's just because you said yes to this radio show.

And I say, just because.

Because you did 52 episodes in your very first year and you've already interviewed over 100 people, so you must have learned something.

I did, and actually, when I started the show, I thought, 52, that's a long time.

So I took out a yellow pad of paper and I numbered 1 to 52 and listed my episodes because I wondered if I could make a whole year because I signed a one year contract.

And we did.

And now we're in our second year.

I've interviewed some amazing people because I wanted to search out those people who are really doing interesting things.

I found a lady in Florida whose name is Linda, who started writing comedy plays in her late mid to late 70s.

And she they're really funny.

And one of them is called, phony baloney.

And it's about teenagers who get scammed on the phone.

I found a gentleman who does workout routines.

His name is Mitch on Instagram.

Does them in his living room.

No exercise equipment at all.

And we just checked before we came on here today.

He has ove 800,000 followers on Instagram.

No exercise equipment.

He doesn't even talk.

He just says and does the exercise.

Does the exercise.

So I had Mitch on my show and other amazing people who talk about the things that we should learn and know about growing older.

And, Catherine, I think there's two groups of us.

We've always talked about the older people, the older generation, but really we are now the older generation, but we're still taking care of our parents.

So we are the adult children of aging parents, and we have our own needs as well.

So in my show, I've talked about the needs that we have as adults, children.

So we're seniors and adult children of aging parents at the same time.

So that group has their own needs as well.

So you were feeling ageism in the workplace, and yet you're a caregiver for your mother who's 105.

My mother will be 106 October 18th what is that like for you and your husband to be caregivers for her?

Well, it my mom remembers everything she's ever done.

If you ask her where she was, the second Tuesday of May in 1939, she'll tell you.

So.

She's a pretty amazing person.

So caregiving for he is always a bit of an adventure.

She thinks she's perfectly happy where she is, but of course, tha because we go there every night and, you know, my husband's job has become taking out my mom's trash, which doesn't really give him that fulfillment in his later years that he was hoping for.

we enjoy her.

We are sorry to see her age an become a little bit more frail.

the thing about people our age who are facing this is that we thought that by this point in our life we'd be retired and traveling.

And here, many of us, not just me and Peter, many of us, and you included, I think, have parents who are still alive.

And all of a sudden, we're finding ourselves as retired, wanting to go on these cruises or doing all this travel and still caring for our parents.

So that gives us a whole nother challenge in a whole nother phase of our age and and our lives, because our parents are living much longer, just as we hope that we do.

Right.

So now we look at my mom and we say, okay, so we've got 30, 40 years of our life still to go, right?

We have no reason to believe that we're not going to live as long as my mom.

My dad lived till 99.

Peter parents lived until their 90s.

But we also need to talk about stage.

Stage, which is that, you know, we all have different stages of our life which aren't always our age.

We have to be sure that we don't categorize people by their age.

But caring for mom is, you know, as it is a joy.

It's also certainly I would li if I said it's not a challenge.

You know, I worry about it.

I have to make sure that she has food, that she doesn't just eat cheese and crackers.

Like she does.

And she wants to stay by herself where she's living.

And you make that possible by driving back and forth.

We do and we do.

We do, we do.

So yeah she might have been thinking that we'd be living the cruise ship life, the European vacation life.

And here you are launching a new career.

We're having great succes with it and being a caregiver.

And you're building a home.

So you and Peter must have decided if we have 30 or 40 years possibly to live.

How do we want that to look like?

What would that look like?

And say, tell us about that, because that's interesting as well.

We bought a house and then right next to it was a little duplex.

So we bought the duplex and we've had as a rental for several years was 100 years old.

Finally we tore it down, said, let's build a house.

Well, in the meantime then, the city made some changes which require that we make one room in an Adu.

the thing it's interesting is, of course, we started this process four years ago.

Well, now we're four years older.

So as we were outside planning the front porch, the idea was that the front porch outside of this doorway would only be so big.

Now I said, oh, wait a minute.

What if some point in time we need a walker or a wheelchair?

We need that area to be this big so that I won't fall.

Opening the front door with a bag full of groceries are in my walker.

So that.

And the other thing is that like our levers for our faucets now are levers rather than knobs.

Okay, so there's things that we've changed during this process as we've grown older and realized that we're going to have differen sets of needs You mentioned Ada, and I don't know if our viewers caught tha because we don't have Adu here.

What is a Adu?

An Ad is an auxiliary dwelling unit.

And what is that about?

The reason we talk about that is in California, the idea was that we wanted t increase the housing capacity.

So the state of California made it very, very easy for people to build, which at one time would have been what we cal granny flats.

Okay.

All right.

So now it's an auxiliary dwelling unit.

All right.

So now, it used to be that in order to build a Adu in your backyard you had to have this huge lot.

Well, now they make them.

You can build one on a smaller lot, because the state wants you to have more housing available for people.

So in our case, we took down two units.

We took down a duplex.

Right.

So it because we took down two we had to add two.

So the state required the city required that.

And somewhere in our property we had to build either two small condominiums.

All right.

Or we had to build, some in some way.

We had to get two units back on that property.

So w and we don't have a large part.

We're right in the fun zone of Newport Beach, California.

So people know that if you kno that area, you're going to know it's there's no lots there.

So in order to do that, that we were required to have an outside stairway that leads up to a bedroom on the second floor.

And in that room it has a separate access, which we can access from the rest of the house.

But it can be closed off.

So it has its own bathroom, ow kitchenette and its own closet.

So that is legally an auxiliary dwelling unit.

And then to add to that, we can't ever rent that unit for less than 30 days, because the idea is that it's supposed to be available to make it an additional dwelling unit.

Okay.

So somebody could rent it, has an apartment, or your mother can maybe live there or something.

Yes.

So very interesting.

And, so we know that ADUs are making their way across the country from both directions and, trying to make it easier for people to age in place have multigenerational living, just create more affordable housing.

And so that's one of the options especially in landlocked areas.

Yes.

So, yes, and especially you mentioned multi-generational housing.

That's becoming a really big issue as moving to an assiste living community is expensive.

Having home care is expensive, but bringing your parents int housing is always a possibility.

And at least in California, a lot of the developers now are building homes tha they called multi gen housing.

We have a frien who's in the age tech community who helps familie build their home to be a multi gen property, either by having a down the first floor, convert it to a place wher the in-laws or whoever can live, and then the rest of the house is for the full family because very hard to put the other family the mom upstairs idea ideas, they can't walk up.

So here's what we know is there's going to be a huge housing crunch because the population is shifting.

Tell us what you know about the population shift, the 65 year olds versus 18 and younger?

I will and I'm also going to tell you as far as housing, that a really popular and hot property across the country, and you have a lot of them here fortunately, is going to be single leve housing for that exact reason.

So the population shift is in 2030, there are going to be more people over 65 than under 18.

That is a huge statistic that is really big.

And that means housing has to accommodate the older population, the age population.

Here's the other thing I'm thinking, Valerie, is if you're experiencing ageism at 65 plus in your 70s and 80s, that's kind of going to be the norm.

Am I right?

It is going to be the norm.

Absolutely.

And people need to realize that not only in housing, but in businesses, in restaurants insurance companies banks everywhere needs to realize that that is their demographic, that is their population.

And they need to build for us and not treat us like old people.

Please don't treat us like we're old because we're not.

We're not.

But we need to understand that that's the way.

That's the people who are going to be your customers.

Absolutely.

So rather than marginalize, the age friendly.

Absolutely.

What does age friendly mean to you.

Well let's talk about ageism.

Age friendly means treating us like we are regular people going to be around.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don't tell me that you won't hire me because I'm not going to be around.

That's terrible.

But let's talk about ageism.

Ageism is really discrimination.

It's even as much as talking about the silver tsunami is ageism.

And saying that, I'm having a senior moment because I lost my keys.

Okay.

Well I lost my keys when I was 25, so that didn't make me, I didn't say, oh I had a senior moment when I was 25.

Right.

So ageism is being very aware of what you say, how you treat people how you, treat them in public.

I go to the doctor's office and they look up my mom, are you twins?

I mean, are you kidding me?

Do I look like I'm 105 years old?

But be respectful of people and don't look down on them because they're older.

Because we are going to be.

There's going to be more of us and more of you.

What are some, like, bigger ideas that you've had for businesses to be more age friendly, let's say, in terms of how things are arrange for the environment and sounds, well first of all, it's your housing.

You know, housing is certainly one.

And in I think another great idea we just mentioned, retail is there are things now that are called age friendly communities or age friendly businesses.

So let's say, for example that a barber shop on Tuesdays makes them so that they're age friendly day.

So they change their music.

So that day they don't have the heavy rock sounds.

They have something a little bit more mellow.

And people who are older and like a little bit more mellow or the 60s Beatles or whatever, that's their day to go in there.

All right.

And the same thing with restaurants.

Be sure that you accommodate your your guests.

Make sure you try to don't have too many steps up to the front door Just be aware of those things.

And that's good for anyone of any age, because there are people that can have injuries or, different challenges within any one of any age.

Absolutely.

You mentioned the Beatles.

Let's talk about the Beatles.

Let's talk about the Beatles.

So I want to hold your hand.

How about that?

So yesterda you were on your way to Wichita to do this show, and your you radio show aired in Los Angeles.

Dad, who was on your show yesterday?

I am so excite to share with you that yesterday a guest on my radi show was Doctor Angie McCartney, Paul McCartney's stepmother, and his stepsister Ruth.

Angie and Ruth have a podcast in Los Angeles called Flex to Flex, and Angie McCartney married Pau McCartney's dad when she was 32.

His dad was 62 and she met him one day.

She was a widow at a four year old daughter, Ruth, and she met him one day and he said, well, would you like to be my housekeeper or do you want to just move in and keep me company, or do you want to marry me?

And she looked up and she said, I'll marry you.

And two months later they were married.

Her stories were touching, heart wrenching.

I could cry, I could laugh.

We think that, oh, she was Paul McCartney's mum.

She must have had an amazing life and how lucky she was.

But no one's life is that easy.

And some of the stories she told me were incredible about how she lived through bombings in Liverpool when she was a little girl.

She was taken out of school when she was 11 because her school was turned into a munitions factory, and they would go down in the bunkers at night, and then in the morning they'd come out and walk around, see whose houses were bombed the night before.

So her life wasn't good as a child.

And then as a young mother, she was widowed.

She lived with Jim McCartney, and she would be fixing tea in the kitchen, and there were people hanging out on their fence, and little Ruth would go to school, and she was wear uniform and had to have her name on her unifor so kids would cut the McCarthy name, McCartney name off of her uniform so they could have something from Paul McCartney, or they would cut her hai so they had some hair from Paul McCartney sister, what storie they had to share and stories.

And so what would you say your biggest from those conversations were?

Oh, I it was there's several, several.

One thing was at the en I asked her and no, I understand she's 96 years old an she still does a weekly podcast and she's an author with two new books being released yet this year, and it's already almost the end of the year.

So she's not she is not old, but always ageless.

She is always ageless.

She is my gal.

And at the end I ask them, what would you still like to do in the world?

Is there anything you still would like to do?

What would you like your legacy to be?

She said, I would lik to bring kindness into the world and all the things that they've been through, which hasn't all been glorious by any means.

When she moved to Los Angeles she got a job as a receptionist, and that's pretty amazing.

You wouldn't think that woul happen to Paul McCartney's mum.

Ruth left three things with me.

She said, be sure that in your life you do three things.

One is don't be afraid to pivot, which they've done many times.

Don't be afraid to reach for the stars.

And number three, she said don't be afraid to call anybody on the phone.

If you want to talk to them, work on it until you are able to get them on the phone.

So right now, her challenge is still to talk to the Pope.

She wants to talk to the Pope.

All right.

So I'll be watching the summit.

We haven't.

We will.

But that had to be a big deal for you because Beatles fan, I'm assuming.

Yes.

Well you know, I was, I was that was.

I hate to say it, you'll all age me now, but yes, that was the Beatles with my high school years.

And my friend John had all the Beatles records.

And so it's really a big thing.

And when I first started my show, Catherine, I thought about who I wanted on my show and I knew of Angie McCartney, and it was always a dream that she would be on my show.

So I was absolutely just humble and touched that she could not believe that I was able to to have her on my show.

Well, congratulations.

That's really extraordinary.

And and said, that was great.

And by being curious like that, you learned, oh my gosh, they're just normal people and they've had their own challenges, but that yet they've done extraordinary things all on their own, and not because they were connected to the Beatles.

Absolutely.

And it was interesting because in order to work with them or to have them on my show, we had to have a pre-show interview, which most people don't do.

So I had to interview with them first, and I, what if I don't make it through the interview?

Right?

So we interviewed, we had a 15 minute call, which ended up being over 60 minutes over an hour.

So then they agreed to be my guest.

Great.

So yes, they enjoyed you obviously.

So they call me Val now.

So.

Okay, Val.

So who's on your wish list now?

Maybe our, PBS Kansas viewers can help you.

Okay, so I would like to know if we can deliver the Pope.

Well, I know, I know, Dan Buettner, who has, founded kind of the Blue zones with National Geographic.

I would love to have him as on my show.

A couple of authors I'd like to have.

There's a lady who wrote a book called stage, Not Age, which really, really, really resonated with me because as I mentioned at the beginning, I talked I didn't want to be considered old among my peer group.

And when I read her book, she talks about that you could be 75 and be totally starting a new career.

Yeah, or you can be 75 and be really old, and we should be considered and looked at by our stage, not our age.

And that is so important to me.

So I would love to talk to her.

I think that makes life and the Pope okay.

Get the Pope to.

Okay.

You know he was raised in Cal in Chicago.

Oh, that is a Chicago boy.

It's more obtainable now.

Yes, yes.

All right, well, good luck with that.

But I think that when you feel empowered and you are looking forward, it adds so much life and that you can really have much more fulfilling life.

Because before your radio show, you were thinking, oh, I don't know I think the takeaway is that you could be one idea away from something that totally changes the wa you feel and your perspective.

Definitely.

And one of the things that Angie McCartney is doing is writing a book of TS about TS and recipes that she thinks will go away with the passing of her generation.

So if I would encourage our listeners today, if there's something that you want to do, if you have recipes, if there's something in your life that you haven't done yet, there's so many opportunities.

You don't have to go to work anymore.

You can work on on the phone, on the internet.

So I don't think that people need to think that because they're 65 by any means, by 65, that you need to retire, that you should an employers and businesses should not put people in that position.

There's so much wisdom to be gained from people who've lived in our generation, because really, we are the children of World War Two parent and they've gone through a lot.

So what we learned from them and what we've learned and my gosh, we learned from the Beatles.

Look at all after all, right.

And what we're learning now there's so much to be, rewarded from from all the wisdom of people who are our age that we shouldn't put them aside.

And not only that, the population really is going to be shrinking on the other end.

So we need to expand the workforc from the people who are older.

Yeah.

And we do liv in an empowering age right now.

There's so much opportunity with the internet and everything we do.

There's a neurosurgeo and our neurologist in New York who's 100 years old and wants to still practice, and he complains that people are afraid that he won't be around to treat them.

So we're going we are going to talk to him.

I do want to talk to him.

So normalizing, being productive and leading fulfilling lives all the way through and jus we want to offer encouragement that absolutely so much more you can do.

Absolutely.

Needeth maybe think a little bigger.

Thank you.

Definitely, definitely.

I don't want anyone to hear any of my shows and think that they can't accomplis whatever that they want to do, and we all think about that.

But, you know, it's somewhat trivia, oh, you know wish for the stars or whatever.

But now really your age is not limit doesn't limit you.

Your age is limitless.

You can definitely be always ageless.

That's amazing.

And you certainly are.

Thank you.

Valerie, thank you so much for coming to Kansas to empower all of us here.

It's my pleasure.

We appreciate my pleasure in the show.

Thank you.

And thank you for tuning in.

If you have questions or want more information about this topi or anything else that we cover, we reach out to us.

You can email us at Empowering Seniors at KPTS .ORG or give us a ring at 316-686-4500.

I'm Katherine Ambrose and I'll see you on the next Empowering Seniors.

This.

On the next empowering seniors.

We're talking about dementia.

With Doctor Tam Cummings.

I'm Catherine Ambrose, and that's on the next empowering Seniors.

Tonight on empowering seniors, we have Doctor Tam Cummings to help us untangle dementia.

Perfect.

I'm Catherine Ambrose and that's tonight on empowering seniors.

Hold it, hold it.

That's the one.

Okay.

Awesome.

Okay.

Stop that just yet.

Do we get everything?

Do you feel like we covered everything?

I do covered a lot.

Oh, you know what?

We didn't do a single thing about the tools.

Okay.

Let's do that.

Okay.

They're on.

I am collected on my website.

Okay.

They're all just They have to go find out more.

Yeah.

Okay.

Ready?

Three.

Two.

One.

And Doctor Cummings, how can people find out more about what you do?

Well, not so much what I do, but tools to help you.

Help your doctor.

Help your loved one.

Are gathered on my website, which is tam cummings.com.

Like that.

Like, is there a place where go.

Okay.

Very good.

Okay.

All right.

So ask again.

Okay.

Right.

Yeah.

I told you, I know.

Okay.

Ready?

Three.

Two.

One.

Is there a place where families can get tools that will help them?

Absolutely.

One of the things people don't realize is that there are tools for dementia, for people with dementia.

And they're all observational because you can't ask a person with brain damage to give you the right answer.

So, they're in the public domain, but we've got them gathered together in the tool section on my website, which is Tam cummings.com.

And there's tools to measure pain, to measure depression or anxiety.

And remember, if mom is on an anti-anxiety but she fails the Hamilton anxiety test.

The anxiety medicines not working if she's on an antidepressant and she fails the Cornell scale for depression and dementia.

She's on the wrong antidepressant.

So these tools will help you understand what's going on with them.

They're the tools you will take to the doctor.

And there are also tool in there to help you, the family caregiver measure your own stress levels.

When you see your doctor.

Well, let's talk about stress and dementia a little bit.

How does that play into this?

Well families are extremely stressed because they're exhausted and because no one has explained the disease to them.

One of the most common things I hear is why didn't the doctor tell me?

And I'm like, well, it's going to take me four hours.

And that's not what a doctor does.

That's what my job is.

And so families are extremely stressed because they don't understand their loved one is not in denial.

They're not pretending.

They're not showing off.

They're responding to social skills and brain damage.

And that's how the brain is doing what it can do.

But there's gaps in that weird, logical way.

Yeah.

And depression.

I know there's a correlation with depression and dementia.

We know now that, and I see it when I'm speaking and I say to families we know now that as family caregivers you've probably developed PTSD.

You've absolutely got to have depression, because how can you not get depressed watching someone you love slowly die, and you'll see the audience and they're frowning at me.

I won't take that medicine.

And then I say or you cannot take the medicine.

And we believe about ten years after the onset of untreated depression will come Alzheimer's.

So that gets people's attention, because here's something we can do.

What are some other things that you can do to better your chances on not getting dementia?

Look up the million veteran longitudinal study.

It lists the eight things to do to live into your 90s, not have heart disease and not develop dementia.

Ornish released his study, July 29th just last month.

And it follows the same thing.

It is our diet and exercise to keep this.

So it's not last month out of 202 so that we can, if we rerun it.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, doctor, but, more or less just released a study in.

Okay.

Tell me when you're ready.

You're ready.

And, doctor just released his study, which is.

Now, there's 500 longitudinal studies, and the million veterans is a million veterans between 48 and 100.

Yes, there were male and females that were studied.

It lists the eight things also listed.

It comes down to the two ugliest words in the English language diet and exercise.

And we've got to pay attention that we're moving our bodies enough and that we're eating foods that are not processed.

Diet, exercise.

And then what are the big ones after that?

Diet?

Exercise?

Are you getting enough sleep?

If you've gone three months without, eight hours sleep, you've developed insomnia.

What is your stress level like?

No tobacco, no alcohol.

And I come from the state where we're leading the nation in drinking, both during the pandemic and after the pandemic.

That you have relationships with people of all ages.

That' where grandchildren are handy.

Having a faith or a spiritual background is a very positive thing.

And our aging process.

And don't get addicted to opiates.

Okay.

So what can I tell you?

The veterans studied everything.

Some of the basics.

Yeah, but think about it.

How much we move now versus how we did when we were kids, the kind of food you and I had as kids.

The kind of food that's available now.

Okay.

It's a big difference.

Okay.

Good to know.

And if you know you have advice, let's say alcohol.

Are there things that you can do to lessen its impact?

You mean rehab?

No.

What you would want to do.

Because I know people around me are like, I'm not quitting.

But what I would ask you to do is if you're still going to have a glass of win or to have a full glass of water before your wine or before your cocktail, and another glass of water after.

Not a sip, but a glass.

And if you're waking u between 2 and 3 in the morning, that's when the brain processes alcohol.

If you're actually waking up you're drinking too much.

Wow.

Okay.

So your brain itself tries t tell you, hey we're not happy.

Well gathering more information just you can do better when you know better.

Absolutely.

Sharing that.

Thank you.

Here we go.

Okay I don't know if I can keep all of that.

I'm also good I know, I know Catherine should do a series.

Hahaha.

Yeah yeah.

We'll scare everybody in Kansas.

They'll all move to Oklahoma.

Which brings me t why do people live in Oklahoma?

Yeah, it's just flat.

Yeah, their weather' a little bit warmer than ours.

That's one thing.

Yeah.

They go, oh, okay, I got to do my promos, but you're.

Oh, awesome.

You can sit there an I'll do the promos or you can.

Yeah, you do your promos.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

I'm loving your shoes.

Thank.

Oh.

Thank you.

I know several people that.

On the next empowering seniors.

We're talking to Valerie Van the Silver, a Los Angeles radio host that started this brand new career in her 70s.

Great.

This episode's all about reinvention.

And it's next on.

Yeah.

Okay.

Ready?

Yeah.

Okay.

Don't miss a show on reinvention on the next empowering Seniors.

Let's.

Okay.

That's how we can do more.

I'm rose.

That topi and more on the next empowering.

Okay.

Ready?

Three.

Two.

One.

That topic and more on the next empowering seniors.

Let me get one with your name.

Oh, you want you to say I'm Captain Ambrose.

Okay.

Sorry.

I'm still thinking I help you.

It's a tension thing.

Okay.

That topic and more on the next.

I'm ready.

Okay.

I'm.

That's what I'm captain Ambrose.

Okay.

Ready?

Three.

Two.

One.

I'm Katherine Ambrose.

And that topic and mor on the next empowering seniors.

Okay.

You like it?

It's fine with me.

Do you want me to redo it?

No.

That's fine.

Okay.

Let's do, very similar.

Okay.

Ready?

3 to 1.

Tonight on Empowering seniors, we're going to meet radio show host Valerie Van de Silva from Los Angeles.

She started a radio show in her 70s, and she's already interviewed over 100 people.

She's learned so much about being always ageless.

I'm Catherine Ambrose, and that's tonight on empowering seniors.

I think I talked over each day one more time.

Okay.

Okay.

Ready?

Three.

Two.

One.

I'm Catherine Ambrose and that's tonight on empowering seniors on the.

Great job.

Okay, that was really good.

How was it?

You did great.

How was it?

I think it's excellent.

And I think that by the tim we add all these things, there be a real colorful show.

Let me think of the cameras one more time.

Was it okay?

Oh, yes.

I have to play.

I did fantastic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

No.

To ask her.

Yes.

Okay.

Hang on.

Let me go ahead and look at her.

Okay.

Okay.

In three, two, one.

So it sounds like maybe this has turned out to be a bigger project than you thought.

Building the house.

So how have your views changed on the bill job?

So if anyone ever wants to know, first of all, it takes longer and it costs more.

And it's hard on a marriage.

And there's three of us i our family building this house.

We have one son, and everything includes Eric and his lovely wife, who gives us our decorating tips.

But definitely you start planning and then you start building and things change.

You go look at it and say, how did we let this happen?

In my case, for example, I can't reach my new fan over the stove.

How did how does that happen?

Right.

But there's certain thing that are important to everyone.

My husband loves his books, and we needed to have bookshelves built for him.

He has planned for three years that his office is going to be on the third floor deck of that house.

And I have promised him that he will be happy in the big scope of life, especially as we do get to the next phase.

What's really important is that we are together, and whether we live i that house or no matter where we live, being together and going home to my husband is what really matters.

And it's my job to hold that all together.

So the little details in life are not important.

If you need someone that you have to care for and you don't have a bathroom, that is, that's not good.

So what you need to do is plan your life, your house, so that no matter what happens to you, you're still together.

That's sage advice.

Really.

Plan for the future.

Keep in mind it's the relationship that are important and precious.

Absolutely.

Do you think, as you've gotten a little older that you've calmed down on the getting riled up about things?

Oh, do you tell us and tell us more about love?

Oh, no question, no question.

And I happen to absolutely love my husband more than my life.

I love my husband.

We have a job that my husband is Dutch, so I have a job that when when I was born, God could se I was going to be a challenge.

So he had to search all around the world to find the best place to find a husband for me.

And he knew that people are really nice and very patient.

So he then brought Peter into the world and sent him over.

Well, I'm glad he did.

I'm glad to see.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

So, all in all, peace.

All that together.

Go ahead and stop.

And if you can stop in two and a half or more, still fresh in your heart.

Okay.

All right.

Ready?