Miami, Fla. – Dayanara Torres overflowing with contagious joy. She is always laughing, willing, talkative and suddenly surprises with a nice comment. It’s a state of mind that has its roots in the fullness of being a woman, mother, and entertainer.
Since moving to the city of Miami a year and a half ago, a different life scenario has opened up for her and just like winning the Miss Universe title in 1993, new opportunities immediately opened up for her. She decided to settle in the city of Florida after living in Los Angeles, California for 17 years along with her sons Cristian Anthony and Ryan Anthony Muñiz Torres.
30 photos Primera Hora traveled to Miami for an in-depth interview with La Toalteña.“Suddenly I’m alone in Los Angeles and I’m like: What am I doing here?”, he announced from the Miami Beach Botanical Garden on the occasion of his 30th anniversary in government. “When they went (to university), I said, ‘I’m going closer to Puerto Rico, closer to Cristian’, who is in New York; Ryan will most likely end up in New York but right now he’s here so I had to be closer and did it without a second thought. I remember I was swimming and I was like, “My god, if something happens to me here in the pool, who will find me, how many days later?” I sold it and came here to Miami and I love it . I haven’t stopped since I got here.
A talent on the Univision network since winning Season 5 of the Mira quién baila contest, she joined the show El gordo y la flaca as a co-host as soon as she arrived in Miami. “I did a little bit of everything, it fascinates me. I’m next door to my sister, right now Ryan is with me for a few days, god knows if we’ll be roommates or not, but I’m a lot closer to Puerto Rico. Once, driving from Los Angeles to Puerto Rico, I said, “It takes me all day to get there,” so I couldn’t be that far.”
The woman from Toal is aware that at 48 she has a great body, a short haircut that emphasizes her beauty even more and a satisfaction that flows from every word and gesture. “I feel happy, I feel full, I feel satisfied. Everything happened as it had to happen. I believe that the universe allowed everything to happen exactly as it had to happen. I got married, I got them early, they’re graduating; I’m still young, I look young, I can do whatever I want. If I currently have a job in China, I pack up and leave. Everything was perfect and at the same time love comes and I say, “What could be more perfect than that?” Not that I wrote it. Everything was spectacular.
Unlike the past, it was Dayanara herself who revealed the theme of love, a reflection of the unexpected happiness she experienced over two years as she began a relationship with the Brazilian-born producer-director. Marcelo Gama. “He’s the director of every program that’s in Latin America, the Latin Grammys, the Billboards, the LAMAS, everything that involves awards. He also directed Look Who’s Dancing. I didn’t meet him while dancing. I won in court, I won because I was the best, lie (jokes) but I had seen it. He came over the weekend to look at the thesis and I checked, we never spoke but there were eyes. After I won he sat at the table with me, we talked a bit but that was it. Years went by until 2021,” she said of the beginning of a relationship that made her float.
Were you afraid of falling in love again?
“You’re always scared of falling in love again, especially when you’re going through such strong, humbling, sad things, but at the same time I didn’t want to give power to this episode, which has nothing to do with me, nor that it is.” rules my life or my life. You look to the future, still I’m looking for love. When I got divorced 19 years ago, I was a lot more scared at first. In those moments I say, “All things considered, what’s happened in my life is what gave me the tools to know what I want, what I’ll never let go of and what I’ll never accept, so it’s perfect.” for me.” .
There comes this wonderful man who is human for the first time, who sees me, who wants to see my success; He doesn’t want to pigeonhole me, on the contrary, he wants to see me shine, he wants to see me on stage and it’s the first time. I live something completely different, but it makes me so happy because it’s what I deserve.
-Dayanara Torres, Miss Universe 1993
Both are currently in a professional high phase and therefore prefer to enjoy the everyday life in the relationship. “Right now we are living to the fullest, we are living one day at a time and happily. We didn’t think any further, but we’re happy.”he claimed.
Miss Universe 1993 met her partner, television producer and director Marcelo Gama, while competing on Look Who’s Dancing. (VANESSA SERRA DIAZ)The happiness she speaks of is even greater as she also experiences a new phase of motherhood now that her children are independent young adults. “Suddenly I had a hole in my stomach, because what am I supposed to do with my life?I don’t know what it’s like not paying attention to them; That when a tooth hurts, that when they have a stomach ache, all these things get out of hand and they get taken away, and I understand they need to move forward and fly and you hope they take everything they’ve been taught and make the best decisions for their lives and I have to let them go but that’s the hard part. At the same time it becomes easier for the whole life to open up and what I’m doing with my life now, (well) a lot of things“.
Fortunately, your emotional state is in line with your health. After her skin cancer diagnosis in 2019 and subsequent treatment, she can say that she is healthy. He carries out his medical check-ups every three months and will continue to do so for another two to three years.
He admits that for a long time he ignored the signs of the disease, which was in stage 3 at the time of diagnosis. “My cancer, and by my own fault and not knowing, the same ignorance, I got past her.” Bein, because I didn’t see it all the time, he didn’t pay her any attention; I realized it was growing, it had color, it had relief, and it didn’t look good. Maybe out of the same fear that something is wrong, I shouldn’t even check it, it was the worst thing I’ve done. I was with him for seven or eight years“, revealed.
Sharing the course of his illness and his treatments on social networks has raised the awareness of a section of the Hispanic population in the United States to such an extent that dermatological associations have dubbed it the “Dayanara effect”. “Maybe I could have stayed silent and spent my illness alone, with my family, with those closest to me, as something very personal and very own, but I said no, I need to talk about it because that’s not how I knew it. “What happened, many people he had to learn and many people learned.”