Actress Melissa Gilbert, best known for playing the “OG halfpint,” as she likes to call herself, on the hit 1970s/1980s TV show Little House on the Prairie, is celebrating her 61st birthday on May 8.
She recently posted a super fun video to Instagram where she and her friend Ilena Tovia showed off their dance moves while modeling two of the Modern Prairie dresses that are for sale now on the Modern Prairie site.
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A post shared by Iléna Tovia (@mommailena)
Modern Prairie is a project Gilbert co-founded in 2022 with Nicole Haase. It is a “community-driven company” that “inspires and supports women aged 50 and beyond to redefine their purpose and live life on their own terms,” according to the website.
Modern Prairie’s mission is to empower older women who might be made to feel “invisible,” “irrelevant” or “overlooked.”
As Gilbert wrote in her 2022 book Back to the Prairie: A Home Remade, A Life Rediscovered, “Growing older has given me the confidence and permission to discover my authentic self. I have become more empowered by embracing change and my reaction to it, and now understand the importance of slowing down. That includes being more mindful and appreciative of the little things, along with my connections to other people. This is rooted. This is confident. This is a woman who has earned her opinions.”
Ahead of her 61st birthday, Gilbert also showed off her baking skills on the Modern Prairie Instagram, something she does regularly. The Instagram is full of her home cooking demonstrations and her modeling some of the prairie fashions that the website sells.
In 2013, Gilbert married actor/director Timothy Busfield (Thirtysomething, The West Wing), and the two of them moved to upstate New York, where they live in a cabin they renovated. Another fun fact Gilbert fans may not know — her sister is Roseanne and The Big Bang Theory star Sara Gilbert.
