Once upon a time, there was a man who told Brazilian model-turned–wellness advocate Martha Graeff that she was past her prime. Graeff was in her thirties—and wearing that decade of her life like a slinky dress at a beach party. But as good as she may have looked on the outside, on the inside, Graeff suspected that this man was calling her old. She Googled the phrase just to be sure that was what he meant. It did.
As much as his words stung back then, Graeff is now having the last laugh, after launching a new line of longevity beverage shots called Happy Aging late last year.
“It’s more than a product,” she says, looking every bit unbothered and youthful. “It’s a movement. I see women fighting with the way we are looking. And it’s starting younger and younger—including myself. I wanted to start embracing this process and create a movement where others could too.”
Graeff’s own story involves a journey toward embracing herself—flaws and all—and finding inner peace. Born and raised in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Graeff was actively recruited by a modeling agent who came to her school and tried to persuade her to work in Europe during her two-month school break.
“My mother was a TV presenter in Brazil and my first jobs were with her,” Graeff recalls. “When I was 13, I did a commercial with her, and that’s how I got started in TV. I have always loved to communicate. In fact, I didn’t love modeling because I couldn’t communicate in it. One of the things about my personality is I like to have a conversation.”
The modeling agent was persistent. At first, Graeff’s parents felt she was too young to leave home to model. But they eventually relented, and Graeff started working in Europe at age 16. Though there were upsides to the steady work, there were also downsides of being a young woman far from home and her mother’s nourishing meals. As a teenager left to her own devices, Graeff says she started eating Häagen-Dazs ice cream and other things she wasn’t allowed to eat at home. Before she knew it, she’d gained 22 pounds. Her modeling agency told her she was overweight and needed to do something about it, but they provided her with no guidance on what to do. She says it was “mentally very damaging.”
Graeff developed an eating disorder that she struggled with quietly, until she opened up to her family and got the help she needed to overcome it. “That’s something I always talk about with young girls,” she says. “Sometimes little comments can do [damage] to a teenage body, you know, because at that age we’re changing, and everything is changing. So, I am careful with my own daughter, and in fact, I would never encourage her to go into [modeling]. After what I’ve seen, there are beautiful things out there, but I feel it’s very lonely, and it can get cruel at times too.”
Graeff moved to Miami in 2010. Six years ago, she took her first journey to India, discovering that the country was a much-needed tonic in her life. Something shifted inside of her. She started meditating, focusing on her wellness, and auditing what she wanted—and didn’t want—in her life.
“It was a time when I said I need to add meaning to my life,” she recalls. “I needed to have purpose. I said I have all the tools. I have the online exposure with my followers. What if each of those followers gave me a dollar?”
She co-founded a philanthropy in Miami, Bazaar for Good, which raises money to improve children’s education and health care around the world. Among other things, Bazaar for Good has built a school in India and provided heart implants for pediatric patients in Venezuela. Last year, it raised $700,000 to benefit Style Saves, which provides school essentials, food, and clothing to more than 150,000 students in the Miami-Dade area. Their work is ongoing.
Happy Aging’s work is ongoing too—perhaps a reflection of the fact that as Graeff nears her fortieth birthday, she’s as grounded and graceful as she’s ever been, the result of a long journey of self-work and self-understanding.
When she developed the idea for Happy Aging, she says she was biologically 12 years older than her chronological age—in part because she was going through a divorce. She was stressed and wasn’t digesting food well, she says. When she reflected on names for the product, she says she initially nixed the phrase “Healthy Aging” because we’re not always aging healthily. Sometimes we get up at 7 a.m. and have a green juice. Other times we stay out late and drink wine.
Graeff co-founded Happy Aging with Dr. Daniel Yadegar, a Harvard-trained physician and longevity expert who specializes in age management and regenerative medicine.
“There’s a stigma with aging,” Yadegar says. “It’s psychological, and people like to figure out how to do it in a graceful way that gives them agency over the process.” The Happy Aging shots, Yadegar says, are just one lever you can flip to improve your longevity.
There’s a shot for whatever your wellness goal may be. The NAD+ Longevity shots include eight ingredients—among them resveratrol and nicotinamide riboside—that slow aging, improve skin elasticity, boost energy, and support cognition. (At press time, those shots had sold out twice, and the third restock was in the process of being shipped out to customers.) There’s also a Glow shot for glowing skin, and a Calm shot for increased zen. More products will be added in 2025, Graeff says, as will in-person yoga classes, meditations, and retreats.
“I wanted to bring happiness into the process,” she says. “Whoever meets me says that I do have this factor of happiness and making people feel happy. And I like that even though we’re science-backed and we have a medical doctor on board, we can be a new company that has this freshness and [we can] talk about something that is so difficult in an open way. If you sit with me, I can talk about everything, and I make people comfortable to share. It’s not just about creating products. It’s about creating connections with women and just sharing stories about aging and maturing together.”
At the end of the day, Graeff’s own secret to happiness has been gratitude, even in times when life is at its hardest. She gets up every day at sunrise and writes about three sources of gratitude—things like her daughter’s smile, her own breath, and the friends she has at her side. “I feel like I’ve lived a lot,” she says. “I feel like I’m 90.”
But Graeff doesn’t look a day over 25, a testament to a life she has lived like a woman well within her prime.
Creative direction: Liandra Sales and Andres Tufano
Production: Skep360
Hair and makeup: Dima Osko
Styling: Liandra Sales and Andres Tufano
Wardrobe: Gowns by Lisu Vega
Jewelry: Denise Pacini
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