Georgianna "Johanna" McCollam Oja's life took a dramatic and very unexpected turn when her aunt and uncle asked her to introduce her friends to a lonely Finnish man they knew in 1960s West Virginia.
Born in Charleston in 1941, McCollam Oja was in her early 20s and just starting out in her career as a school teacher when she first met the Finnish man in question.
"I had a brand new, nice car, a Triumph. We drove around and got to know each other. Little by little, it happened that I ended up in Finland. I didn’t have time to find a girlfriend for him — I took that place myself," she recalls.
The couple moved to Finland in 1965, and while it was quite a culture shock for a young woman used to the bustle of a city like Charleston, McCollam Oja decided she would do her best to adapt.
"I am who I am, and I’m quite persistent," she says, adding that she also received the nickname "Johanna" shortly after arriving in Finland.
And adapt she did.
Because on Friday, "Johanna" was named Finland's 'Grandmother of the Year 2026' by Seurana, a firm that provides companionship and recreational services for elderly people across Finland.
The sisu needed to learn Finnish
Georgianna McCollam Oja has now lived in Finland for over 60 years, and she says learning the language was the most difficult — yet most important — aspect of life here.
She took language classes shortly after arriving, but found the Finnish she learned in the classroom to be almost a different language to the one she heard on the street.
That's because the classes were teaching kirjakieli — the written form of the language — while she was hearing puhekieli (spoken language) everywhere else.
Then one day everything suddenly clicked, she recounts.
"My husband asked another person about a wallet, "onks tää sun" ("is this yours"). It was like in a comic strip — bing!"
At that moment, she says, she realised that "onks" was "onko" (“is”), "tää" was "tämä" ("this"), and "sun" was "sinun" ("yours").
Once she cleared that obstacle, she was able to learn Finnish to a very high standard.
Her family now consider her a model of Finnish sisu (determination in the face of adversity) — and she believes that learning Finnish required the largest amount of 'sisu'.
"Thanks to that, I am sitting here today. My best friend didn’t learn the language, so she returned to America. I decided not to give up," she says.
Ups and downs on life's rocky road
Aside from learning the language, McCollam Oja says she has many cherished memories from 60 years of life in Finland.
In 1980, President Urho Kekkonen invited her and her husband Pekka Oja to the Independence Day Ball at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki.
Pekka Oja was at the time the future research director of the soon-to-be-founded UKK Institute. His job at the institute saw the family move from the capital region to Tampere.
McCollam Oja still actively follows the news, both in Finland and in the US, and she says immigration is a topic that she takes a keen interest in.
In her view, people should always have the opportunity to move from one country to another, especially — as in her case — because of love.
"When people want to be together, why shouldn’t they be? As long as they can agree on which country to settle in," she says.
Although her own marriage later ended in divorce, the soon-to-be-85-year-old says she is very happy in Finland and doesn’t miss life in the US.
But what advice does the 'Grandmother of the Year' have for the generations coming after her?
"Life is never easy. It is a rocky road that goes up and down. When the weather is good, you should enjoy it. When the weather is bad, you have to endure it," she says.
