Fran Miller was in her 50s when she became a yoga teacher.

That was four decades ago.

Miller, who turns 91 this week, is still at it teaching three classes a week in the San Fernando Valley for the city's Department of Recreation and Parks.

She is so lithe and energetic that her students say they hardly notice her age. "I didn't even know she was that old," said Maureen Hanrahan. For much of the 10 years she's been taking Miller's classes, Hanrahan thought the instructor was in her 70s, she said.

Miller moved from her native New York to the Los Angeles area in 1941 and eventually settled in Valley Village. Her husband passed away when she was 40, and the onetime secretary was left to raise her daughters: Robin Cosio, 64, and Wendy Nordstrom, 60.

She first tried yoga after spotting a newspaper ad for a class taught by a rabbi at the Van Nuys YMCA.

Yoga had always fascinated Miller. But it seemed "so far out," she said.

A rabbi teacher was a different story, however. "How could I pass this up?" Miller recalled thinking. She is Jewish, and the class was close by, she said. She enrolled "and took to it like a duck to water."

The rabbi asked Miller to be one of his demonstrators in exchange for free classes. She agreed, and soon he asked her to fill in teaching his classes when he was away.

The first time the anxious Miller arrived to teach, she was armed with a list of notes. She didn't need them. She kept teaching, and when the rabbi announced he was retiring, he gave his position to Miller. Offers to lead private sessions followed, including a full-time summer job at the Highland Springs Resort in Cherry Valley, Calif.

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For longtime yoga instructor, 90, only her age isn't a stretch