Madame Mary Alice

Mary Alice Langston was born in San Antonio, Texas on January 11, 1929, the oldest of three children. She completed all of her schooling through college in Texas with the exception of one year of modeling at the Society of Models in New York City. It was there that she met Miss Grace Kelly herself and, in fact, lunched occasionally with her! As Mary Alice put it, “We were just two working girls having lunch together on our lunch hour.”

In college, Mary Alice majored in Art and French, and her dream was to go to Paris, France. She was the first of her family to go to college! So, after completing college, Mary Alice became a stewardess for American Airlines because they flew abroad! Since you had to be an unmarried young woman to work for the airlines, Mary Alice could only work with them for just six months before she married Mr. Robert Harley Kirk, an airline passenger she met early on who eventually became a captain for Eastern Airlines. Mary Alice said, laughing, “It was the big rage when you got ‘Captain Kirk’ as your pilot!”

The Kirks moved around quite a bit, but they had their first child in Atlanta, Georgia. They had their second child in Evanston, Illinois.

Later in life, once her husband retired, Mary Alice and Robert Harley took to the air for fun, and traveled everywhere! Their travels took them mostly to South America and France, but they also hit all the resort spots, such as Jamaica and Bermuda.

Near the end of his life, Robert Harley developed severe diabetes. Mary Alice took care of her husband until his death in 1993. Following his passing, Mary Alice got affairs at home in order then took a trip to Paris for a class at a French language school. A kind teacher at that school found Mary Alice an apartment in what was known as Paris’s Golden Triangle! Upon finding that apartment, Mary Alice decided to make a new home for herself in Paris.

Mary Alice lived there for 17 years, which is the longest in her adult life that she had planted roots anywhere. She eventually experienced some health issues and so decided to come back to the states to be close to her family. Mary Alice traveled so much with friends and has so many photos that she is currently organizing them to make collages. She also writes poetry, and she continues to love art, reading and conversation with others.