A doctor told Amber Uhler she was “on a path to an early grave” and might not live to see her kids graduate high school. She weighed 300 lbs. Now she’s on a Miss USA stage, and the 20-somethings are the ones cheering her on.
Amber Uhler once got stuck in a foam pit at a trampoline park while playing with her kids, and three men couldn’t pull her out. They thought they’d have to call the fire department. “I’ve never been so humiliated in my life,” she told PEOPLE.
That weekend, five years ago, she wrote down a goal that felt impossible: compete in a beauty pageant. She was 300 lbs, a mom of three, and had just been told at a doctor’s appointment that she was morbidly obese and pre-diabetic.
She never set out to lose 170 lbs. “I think that would’ve been like climbing Mount Everest,” she said. She set out to get healthy, then did three and a half years of dieting and exercise to get there.
In 2024 she was crowned Mrs. Florida Universe, then went on to win the Mrs. Universe USA crown. But the one she always wanted was Miss USA. In July she was appointed Miss Michigan USA 2026 through an open casting call, and on Aug. 27 she competed in the pageant’s 75th edition at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami.
“I signed up to be in a bikini on television after losing 170 pounds,” she laughed. At 41, she was the oldest contestant in this year’s 51-woman field, and she expected to feel small next to the 20-somethings. Instead they rallied around her.
“Even the teen contestants are my biggest fans and my biggest cheerleaders,” she said.
She didn’t place in the Top 20. She left with the Chelsi Smith Congeniality Award, the peer-voted honor for the nicest contestant in the field. The crown went to Justus Kelley of Virginia, 31, who became the first mother and first married woman ever to win Miss USA, three years after the organization opened eligibility to mothers and married women and dropped its upper age cap.
Uhler calls it her Cinderella story, and she doesn’t plan to leave. “You’ll see me every year. This is the pageant I always dreamed of being in, and making it has just been my Cinderella story.”
Like what you read? Follow Thought Catalog on Facebook, and check out more on our website.
