Best-known of all the Ms. Olympia winners, bodybuilder Cory Everson grew up in Deerfield, Illinois, where she was an outstanding athlete throughout high school and college. Everson, whose maiden name was Knauer, attended the University of Wisconsin and won the Big Ten Championship in the pentathlon for four consecutive years. While attending the university, Cory met Jeff Everson, a competitive weightlifter and bodybuilder who worked there as a strength coach. Following her marriage to Everson and her graduation from college, Cory began to train seriously as a bodybuilder. Blessed with outstanding genetics for bodybuilding, she made rapid progress, especially after she and Jeff moved to Los Angeles. She won the Ms. Olympia competition in 1984, the first time she entered, and won every year until 1989, when she retired. Everson soon became part of the fitness show phenomenon on cable television with her Bodyshaping pro-gram. She also had roles in such films as Double Impact (1991), Natural Born Killers (1994), and Tarzan, the Epic Adventures (1996). In the late 1990s she authored several fitness and health books, including Cory Everson's Lifebalance (1998).

Cory Everson