Active Aging: A Day in the Life

If you’re new to retirement or nearing that major transition, you may ponder the possibilities of how to find fulfillment. These two examples of active aging from Beth Kuberka offer a blueprint of what life can be like.

From Ice Capades to Smoky Mountain trails; from decades of teaching to days of learning new things like pickleball – residents of an active lakeside community in East Tennessee are pursuing myriad experience as they realize their active aging dreams.

What’s most interesting is how these strategies of active aging are part of the long game of longevity well into the dusk of life. How do these residents manage to remain energetic as they age? We can offer glimpses of the day in the life – and if you’re considering retirement, or semi-retirement – how you can live this way, too.

Two examples of active aging

Cheryl Wagner-Stahnke, retired educator

After years spent in education and sticking to a schedule, the old habit of staying busy in a daily routine has helped me and my husband adjust to life after working; now, we focus instead on routine fun.

The key is to stay active and engaged where you’re living – and stay curious in learning new things. Who knew I’d get involved in learning pickleball or ballroom dancing? Not my younger self.

It wasn’t until we moved to East Tennessee for an active retirement that I realized all the energy I spent as a mom, teacher, wife and highly social member of my community needed someplace else to go. So, after some months of trial and error, a rejuvenated routine in retirement emerged.

Each weekday, I start with exercising at the wellness center or gym just five minutes down the road from our house. I take two exercise classes a day, making sure the schedules line up for me to jump from one to the next. Then, I usually visit with other class attendees or social club friends I’ve made since we moved here.

It’s also important to me to take a long, 45-minute walk each day around some of the many trails of the community.

Then, after lunch and housework or errands, more activities follow depending on the day of the week. My husband and I are part of several clubs that fill our evenings with gatherings, such as a cooking dinner club, book clubs, a game club (I love board games), a happy hour/potluck club, an adventure club and even a golf club – not the 9-iron found in most golf bags – but a real, actual club of golfers.

That’s what has been the best part about our retirement life in East Tennessee – the community we chose to move to has so many clubs and planned activities filled with people from all different sorts of career backgrounds, that it sometimes feels like being in college again, but without having to attend actual class or have homework assignments. We just get to have all the fun and enjoy the activities – on and off “campus.” Some of the social clubs have planned trips into the greater Knoxville area, like going to the symphony or a sports event.

There is always something to do, and staying involved means staying active, from my point of view. As a former educator who devoted my career to physical education and health, I know it’s the key to longevity.

I retired in June 2025 after teaching for more than 30 years in Madison, Wisconsin. We raised our kids there, too, and we had such a great community and “village” of other sports families, friends, social groups and it was a great place to have a family. But retirement eventually comes for us all, if we’re lucky, and we have been blessed to be able to retire.

When we started looking and thinking about retirement, we knew we had to be in a warm place where the weather was seasonal, not the freezing, below-zero winters that we were sick of; plus, I knew I couldn’t do a heat-and-sunshine-all-the-time place like Florida. We also knew it had to be a place where we could stay active. I am a “yes-girl,” and I love saying yes to trying new things, because I learn that way; as a teacher, learning and growing is truly living.

As I’ve learned new things and made a new “village” in retirement, I know it’s going to continue to be a great life.

Marcia Chaffee, former figure skater

I grew up in figure skating with my mom and sister and spent most of my life on the ice – training, conditioning, practicing footwork and spirals, performing, reaching, and achieving. It was a thrilling career, from takeoff to landing each routine and performance. I loved it. Still do. Even today, years into retirement, I volunteer as a judge for U.S. Figure Skating. I often travel for competitions, so takeoffs and landings now involve airplanes instead of skate edges. Thankfully, where my husband and I now live is just a 35-minute drive away from the airport. Yet, we have mountain and lakeside views that we used to dream about when we were younger.

I knew going into retirement in 2019 that I had to – needed to – stay moving. My body felt the anticipation, as it still remembers the edges and how the slightest shift could keep me upright or send me sliding. That’s how it initially felt, leaving Ohio for East Tennessee: exciting, yet with an intentional need to stay balanced.

Muscle memory doesn’t retire.

Every day, I move. I don’t necessarily call it exercise, because for me, it’s conditioning, which is the same word I used when I skated two shows a day under hot lights and heavier-than-they-looked costumes when I performed with Ice Capades. Years after leaving the ice, my body still thinks in edges and alignments, still very aware of gravity’s consequences. I like to stay busy and moving, because I know someday we won’t.

On Mondays, I head to the mountains with the Hiking Club to hit the trails and breathe in the fresh air. Instead of working out with precise crossover steps on steel blades, my body has grown accustomed to intentional steps made in hiking boots. On Tuesdays, I take a Zumba class; Wednesdays, a spinning class and then I cap off the week with weight-training and toning. I know that each day I get to move my body, I’m training it for lifelong care.

While I keep my body active with all the physical activities, I keep my mind active by playing Mahjong with a club. When older adults used to talk about retirement, there was this common misconception of going to someplace hot and sitting on a beach, not moving. I cannot imagine that for myself – because I know that when you stop moving, you also stop living. Maintaining your body and mind are as much a discipline as freedom; plus, these two concepts rely on each other, I would know. You have to have the freedom to be disciplined, and the discipline to move, exercise, etc. to have freedom.

I’m hoping that my years of endurance – the kind that comes from repetition, travel and showing up even when your legs are tired – helps to keep me moving for many more years.

Conclusion

Whether shaped by years in the classroom or under the bright lights of an ice skating show, the skills these residents carry into retirement are anything but accidental. Discipline becomes daily movement. Curiosity becomes continued learning. Strength – both physical and mental – becomes a form of self-care. Their days in their lives may look different now, but the throughline remains the same: a commitment to staying engaged, staying mobile and staying open to what comes next. In this season of life, active aging isn’t about reinvention so much as continuation – proof that the habits you build over a lifetime can carry you, confidently and gracefully, into the years ahead.

Beth Kuberka is the chief development, marketing and communication officer of Tellico Village, a planned active adult community in Tennessee. She oversees all communications, marketing, sales and first impression initiatives for the village. She has nearly 20 years of experience in planned senior community marketing. She spent 8 years at Rarity Bay, working her way up to marketing director before joining Tellico Village in 2012. Kuberka has extensive knowledge of the workings of senior living communities. She has developed several programs, and currently manages an alliance of 88 village-based businesses. She earned a Bachelor in Informational Science from the University of Tennessee in 2004 with a focus on advertising and business marketing.