Change of Routine

So what is the deal with the smile?" I ask.

"Everybody asks me that," Mary Lou Retton says with a smile. "They always ask me why I'm smiling."

"I don't believe anyone can smile that often. I think you're faking it."

"Wrong," she says, still smiling.

"Your teeth are so white. They're blinding. Are they capped?"

Her smile never wavers. "Everybody always asks me that too."

"Well? What's the answer?"

"Of course they're not capped," she says, completely unoffended. I watch, awestruck, as her smile gets wider.

Shut your eyes and you can see it, can't you? The Mary Lou smile. It was 1984 when most of us first saw it. She was then just sixteen, the little pixie of the 1984 Olympics, only four feet nine inches tall. Every time she finished one of her gymnastics routines, she'd stand perfectly straight, throw out her arms, and flash that smile. You couldn't help but stare at her, mesmerized. "My God," you'd think, "this could be the cutest girl in the history of the world."

At the very least she was the world's most talented gymnast, performing that unforgettable perfect vault to become the first American female to win a gold medal in gymnastics. Since 1984 the United States has had other female Olympic gymnastics champions, but none of them have been able to maintain as high a public profile as Retton, who today is 32 years old yet has the same haircut that she did sixteen years ago and is the same height (still four feet nine inches tall). She still lives in Houston, the city she came to from her home in West Virginia at the mere age of fourteen so that she could train with famed coach Bela Karolyi.

Today Retton has transformed herself from sports star to inspirational guru. She not only travels the country giving motivational speeches at $20,000 a pop ($25,000 if she has to stay overnight) but also has become a self-help author. This past spring she released her first book, Mary Lou Retton's Gateways to Happiness: Seven Ways to a More Peaceful, More Prosperous, More Satisfying Life (Broadway Books). Fittingly, the idea for the book came about because so many people kept asking her about her smile. "I smile because I am truly, fundamentally happy," she tells me over a recent lunch in Houston. "That big smile on the outside comes from a place deep within me—and I want others to know how to find that place within themselves."

It is hard to conceive of anyone better suited for the motivational profession: Retton's vivacity remains a breathtaking phenomenon. On the day I visit her in Houston, she is buzzing from one public appearance to another, exuberantly telling everyone she meets, "You can train to be happy!" At one point she heads to city hall to receive a certificate from Mayor Lee Brown, who has proclaimed this day Mary Lou Retton Day in honor of her new book. "Happy Mary Lou Retton Day!" she shouts, wearing a pink pantsuit, as she enters a room full of city officials. "Everybody smile!"

It probably will come as no surprise to learn that Mary Lou lives about as all-American a life as you can imagine. She and her husband, former college-quarterback-turned-stockbroker Shannon Kelley, have two daughters: Shayla, who is five, and McKenna, who is three. (Retton is pregnant with her third child and due August 20, right about the time this magazine comes out.) They attend Second Baptist Church in Houston, they eat dinner together every night (she insists on cooking), and they have family prayers before the kids go to bed. Concerned that there are not enough wholesome, inspirational television shows for children, Mary Lou and Shannon are trying to sell their own kids' show called "Mary Lou's Flip Flop Shop" to a network. It is part exercise, part motivation, and part silliness: In the original pilot, for instance, Retton read an inspirational story while standing on her head.

After the Olympics she spent three years making appearances around the world and receiving hefty endorsements (she became one of the few women ever to make the cover of a Wheaties cereal box). She regularly was described by the news media as America's Sweetheart. She met Shannon in high school, and she decided to attend the University of Texas at Austin, in part to be with him. "It was also time to experience a normal existence," she says. "Think about it. Up to that point I had been barefoot and in a leotard almost every day of my life."

What she quickly discovered, however, was that her life would never be normal. Around campus there was a buzz wherever she went. There was also plenty of jealous gossip about her among the other UT coeds. "It was as if they didn't believe I was for real," she tells me. "Were they resentful of the attention I had received? I don't know. Maybe. But there were a lot of times when I'd go places, and I could tell that people were talking behind my back. It was like they didn't believe I was really the way I was."

In a rare unsmiling moment, Retton admits that her college days were rough on her. She started gaining weight, and her grades suffered when she began missing classes. "I didn't have a Bela right there saying to me, 'Go, Mary Lou, go,'" she says. She broke up with Kelley and eventually dropped out of school. "Not graduating was very shameful to me," she says. But as Retton tells me many times during our conversation, she is never down for long. She and Kelley got back together, married, started their family—and all the while she kept getting requests to talk about her days as an Olympic champion. Today she says she is busier than she has ever been making speeches and public appearances.

Yet Retton says that the old competitive fire returns when she gets out in the yard and tumbles with her girls. "What's interesting is that my mind tells me I can still compete," she says. "I'll find myself watching competitions and saying, 'I can do that.' And I'm still very flexible. I can stretch way above the norm, but the next day I'm sore and I have to realize I'm just too old." She says that she will not be one of those parents who push their children to take up athletics: "To be honest with you, I hope they don't get interested in gymnastics because I don't want them to have to deal with the burden of following in my footsteps." But recently her daughters told her they wanted to go to a gymnastics class. The young coach watched Retton walk into the gym, holding the hands of Shayla and McKenna, and he got so nervous that he started trembling.

"So what's going to happen if one of your girls shows great gymnastics talent?" I ask her. "Would you send her halfway across the country to be with the best coach the way your own parents did? Would you send her to be with someone fierce and dictatorial like Bela Karolyi, a coach who's known to push kids to the point of injury?"

There is a long silence before she answers. "I don't know. I hope I would be as loving and supportive as my parents were," she says. "I'd like to think that I wouldn't be selfish and that I wouldn't hold my kids back. But that's a tough question. Maybe we'd give it three months and see if she could take it physically. But the decision to go would have to be my daughter's choice. It would have to be her passion. No one—no coach, no parent—can make you a champion. You have to have the drive and the discipline to go to the gym every day. When I was a little girl, I would sleep in my leotard on Friday nights because I was so excited about gymnastics on Saturday mornings."

Which is exactly what made Retton such an international sensation. It wasn't just her enthusiasm and her cheeriness that were so impressive, it was the relentless drive and discipline she possessed during that period. When you meet Retton today, her relaxed and friendly manner makes it easy to forget that she was obsessed with becoming a champion athlete—regardless of the cost. During our interview, Retton tells me story after story about how Karolyi used to push her and scream at her, and she'd tell me how she would keep going. She told me one astonishing incident in which Karolyi forced her to keep working out even though she had a broken finger. Unable to keep her grip on the uneven bars, she fell and landed on her face. Blood started pouring out of her mouth, but Karolyi ordered her back on the bars. When she couldn't continue working out, Karolyi kicked her out of the gym for the day.

"Some people would call that abuse," I tell her.

She gives me an understanding smile. "Those who say that are the people who don't win," she says. "They're not the ones who make it. Listen, Bela was rough. He apologized to me later about kicking me out of the gym. But he never abused me. He was a great motivator. He gave me a confidence that I never would have had without him."

"Do you ever feel a lack of confidence about anything?" I ask her.

She smiles, shrugs, then smiles again. "Not really," she says.

"Do you ever go through periods when you feel really down, moody, or depressed?"

"Sometimes," she says. The smile is practically blinding at this point. "But it never lasts long."

Indeed, Retton's ebullience is one thing that cannot be questioned. At the end of our day together, I follow her to the Houston suburb of Kingwood, where she has agreed to sign copies of her book at a Kroger's.

"A book signing at a grocery store?" I ask.

But Retton is undeterred. "Isn't that exciting?" she exclaims, her teeth as white as Chiclets.

When we arrive, the grocery store managers escort her to a desk and a chair near the front of the store. Behind that is a large velvet purple curtain, apparently used to separate her from the produce section. Thoughtfully, someone has put a footstool under the desk so that the petite Retton has a place to rest her feet.

A slightly cynical person—your typical magazine journalist, for instance—might think that this is the sort of scene that could come only from the brain of an A-list Hollywood comedy writer. But then something extraordinary happens. The young mothers shopping at the store, many of them with their young children riding along in their grocery carts, get one look at Retton and stop dead in their tracks. "Mary Lou Retton, you're at my Kroger's," one woman says, almost breathless. Another pulls out her cell phone and calls a friend. "You're not going to believe who's standing five feet from me," she says. When a Kingwood woman named Madelyn Reudin, a former flight attendant who is now a housewife, sees her, she immediately gets in line to buy her book. When Reudin gets the chance to shake her hand, tears spring to her eyes. "You'll never know what you meant to me," she says. "You'll never know."

For a few moments, I'm completely baffled. I watch a woman walk up to Retton and ask her to sign a banana. (Retton, of course, agrees without hesitation.) Another woman, who knew beforehand of her appearance, arrives with a 1984 Newsweek that has Retton's photograph on the cover. Then it hits me. These mothers were just little girls when she won her gold medal. They were the ones who put her poster on their bedroom walls. They were the ones who started enrolling at Karolyi's and other Houston gyms after her Olympic victory. They were the ones who dreamed that they too could do what she had done. Now they live mostly anonymous lives in the suburbs. They go to the grocery store twice a week. But it's as if the sight of Retton brings back those idealistic, innocent days of their own childhood.

"Mary Lou, can I have my picture taken with you?" one woman asks. Retton agrees, and the woman rushes behind the desk to stand beside her.