11/01/2026
When Ann Angeletti was a little girl in Brooklyn, her father sold ice door to door from a horse-drawn cart. Refrigerators weren’t something most families had yet. Ann left school as a child to help out at the family’s grocery store, and she has been working ever since.
During World War II, while her husband was overseas, she took a job at the Navy Yard, then waited tables, doing whatever it took to keep going.
In 1964, she was driving past an empty storefront in Cresskill, New Jersey, and saw a “for rent” sign. She called the owner and asked how much. He told her $85 a month. She took it, and opened a little shop called Curiosity Jewelry.
Sixty-two years later, she’s still there.
At 102, Ann runs the store alongside her daughter and granddaughter, three generations behind one glass counter. She still makes regular trips into Manhattan’s Diamond District to buy stock, where the dealers know her well, because she always asks for a better price.
People often ask why she doesn’t just retire.
“If I retire, I would die,” she says. “So, I cannot stay home.”
Her advice is just as simple. Get up, shower, eat, take care of yourself. And if you don’t like what you’re doing, change it.
She opened that shop when she was 40. Most people would have called that too late to start something new. She’s been proving them wrong for more than six decades.
