Want to make new friends? Ask this 100-year-old.

Mary Lou Mayo never imagined she’d live to be 100. But she isn’t afraid to stand out. Her manicure matches the fuchsia tint of her print dress and complements her bright pink broad-brimmed hat. As a friend pushes her wheelchair into the West Hartford Senior Center in her home state of Connecticut, two men sitting at a table spot her immediately and call out, “Mary Lou!” Mayo breaks into a smile and starts doing one of the things she loves best: talking.

Mayo co-teaches a class at the senior center called “Friends for Older Adults.” Like many people who have passed the age of 80, she has lost plenty of friends over the years. She also lost her partner, Al, during the pandemic. They had met online 10 years earlier. “I was feeling very lonely” after he died, she says. But one thing Mayo, a former high school teacher and mother of six, has always been good at is making friends. She wants other seniors to follow in her footsteps.

“I don’t think anybody is too old to make new friends,” she tells Yahoo. But she says doing so in later life has less to do with serendipity and more to do with taking the initiative. “I’m good at putting myself out there,” she says. “So many people are reluctant and unsure of themselves and nervous about new situations.” But she believes it’s worth overcoming any shyness or discomfort and taking a risk. “It doesn’t always work out, but when it does, and I know I’ve found a like-minded person who’s going to be a good friend, then I’m delighted.”

It was making a new friend in her late 90s that got her involved with this class in the first place. In the wake of Al’s death, she attended an earlier iteration of the class and hit it off with the teacher, Kevin Ryan. Ryan, who is 82, is a longtime engineer who recently got a degree in gerontology. He’s fascinated by the possibilities of later life, which Mayo seemed to embody.

Despite being almost blind and barely able to walk, she had a forthright manner, steely determination and sharp intelligence. Oh, and she needed a car, because she loves to get out and about. “Do you drive?” was the first question Ryan remembers her asking him. He was hooked.

“It’s not often you get to be with someone further down the road than you are,” he says, especially a centenarian with such grit. “She’s an inspiration,” both to him and the class’s attendees, he tells Yahoo.

The bimonthly class started as a “how-to” on ways older adults could expand their social circles. Ryan says the discussions essentially boiled down to “get yourself out there.” But that changed when he realized something: Many of the class’s attendees had such low opinions of their own worth, they couldn’t make new friends.

“In order for a person to be able to go out into the world, they have to believe they have something to offer,” says Ryan.

That’s where Mary Lou Mayo comes in. As a special education teacher, she says she had success working in a group format with kids who had difficult lives and low self-esteem. She wanted to try that method with older adults. During the class, she encourages people to share their highs and lows and allow themselves to be vulnerable.

She leads by example, speaking openly about her grief at losing Al and her difficult divorce in the 1970s. One of the most important things she values in a friend is “tolerance, because I may say or do something outrageous, something that isn’t accepted in the defined behavior that middle-class American women are ‘supposed’ to do,” she says. It turns out, Mayo is just as likely to bring up sex in conversation as she is the need for help getting around.

At today’s class, 16 people, mostly in their 60s through their 80s, file in and sit down in a circle. When one of the regulars says the last two weeks have been hard for her, Mayo pipes up with words of encouragement: “Your voice is so much richer and happier than when you first came,” she says. Mayo wants attendees to be able to see their own potential and uses herself as an example: “I fell in love for the first time at 85,” she announces at one point, pushing the idea that no matter your age, you have plenty to give and can form new relationships.

Flora Long, 85, and her 91-year-old husband, Guy, are here for the first time. “We only have one set of friends left,” Long tells Yahoo. Others have moved away or died. Despite having good neighbors who look out for them, Flora is determined to make some new friends. “This is my five-year plan: What can I do to lighten both of our lives? And that’s being with people and not being isolated,” she says. When she looks at Mary Lou Mayo, she is encouraged.

“I really want to live to be 100,” Flora says. “I think living is wonderful, I really do.”

Robin Zuidema has been coming to the class for about six months. Zuidema, 75, found out about it because she lives in the same condo building as Mayo.

“I’ve never been that good at being social before,” she tells Yahoo. “Becoming friends with Mary Lou and getting involved with this [class] and the friends there, it’s done a lot to open me up to being just a little more trusting, outgoing.”

Zuidema has an extra reason for finding socializing difficult. “As a transgender individual, I’m not always well accepted,” she says. “But everyone here was very accepting, very open and very supportive.” Zuidema is the first trans person Mayo has ever met. “I love her because she’s very brave and forthright and honest,” Mayo says. “Those characteristics are very important in a friend.”

Ask Mayo what she hopes people get out of her class, and she says she wants them to feel “that they’ve been heard” and accepted for who they are. She says her knack for friendship may have some connection to her longevity, though she’s not certain. But her friends Ryan and Zuidema believe they know why she has lived to 100: She is always up for adventure, endlessly curious about the world around her and interested in other people.

“Despite everything she’s been through and the difficulties she’s having, she still just wants to do everything,” says Zuidema. “She wants to be involved. She’s fabulously interesting to hang out with, and she has a great sense of humor.”

Who could ask for more in a friend?