The inexhaustible octogenarian has been a fixture on the gossip scene for decades.

The daughter of a cotton broker, May Elizabeth Smith landed her first gig in journalism as a writer for Modern Screen; she later moved on to jobs at Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and CBS Radio before stopping off at Cosmopolitan to work under Helen Gurley Brown as entertainment editor. Smith started writing a gossip column for the Daily News in 1976 and quickly amassed a devoted following of housewives with her largely innocuous bits of celebrity dish. Three years later, she branched out to TV with a gig on Live at Five. She later traded the News for Newsday and Live at Five for a deal with Fox, and landed a lucrative deal to syndicate her column to more than 100 papers nationwide, including the Post. The show soon fizzled and her contract with Newsday was terminated in 2005. Thanks to her able assistants, though, her tenure "writing" for the Post continued through 2009.

Smith was married twice, but she's out of closet these days. Her sexual orientation was an open secret for decades, but she confirmed it in her memoir Natural Blonde and has since made mention of her 15-year "companionship" with archaeologist Iris Love. [Image via Getty]