First MotherDaughter Duo to Both Win Miss Texas Compare Their Pageant Experiences, 31 Years Apart (Exclusive) Tabitha ParentSeptember 17, 2025 at 11:00 AM 0 Arian Archer Orlando Sadie Schiermeyer and her Mother Arian Archer Orlando.
- - First Mother-Daughter Duo to Both Win Miss Texas Compare Their Pageant Experiences, 31 Years Apart (Exclusive)
Tabitha ParentSeptember 17, 2025 at 11:00 AM
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Arian Archer Orlando
Sadie Schiermeyer and her Mother Arian Archer Orlando. -
After Sadie Schiermeyer took home the Miss Texas 2025 crown in June, she and her mother, Arian Orlando, made pageant history
Together, the pair became the first mother-daughter duo to have both held the title in the pageant's 88-year-long run
The two sat down with PEOPLE to chat about how the shared experience has impacted their relationship, as well as what they feel has changed about pageant life over the years
Like mother, like daughter!The moment that Sadie Schiermeyer, 22, took home the crown for Miss Texas in June was a momentous point in the pageant's history — but also marked a special occasion for Schiermeyer and her mother, Arian Orlando.With Sadie taking home the 2025 crown at the 88-year-old pageant, the duo became the first mother-daughter pair to carry the crown across two familial generations. Orlando, 51, first took home the crown as Miss Texas in 1994.
And, the Miss Texas legacy isn't the only thing that the two women share. The circumstances of both of their crownings are coincidentally similar.Both Schiermeyer and Orlando competed and did not win the Miss Texas crown during their first year trying for the title. Instead, each of them took home the honor on their second attempt.
In September 2025, just months after receiving the title of Miss Texas, Schiermeyer also competed for the Miss America title, finishing as first runner-up after Cassie Donegan of New York. Orlando also competed for the Miss America title after her stint as Miss Texas, making the top ten during the 1995 iteration of the national pageant."I've always grown up with the stories of what her year was like. I grew up getting to be backstage at Miss Texas and actually meeting the wonderful women that have held the role," Schiermeyer tells PEOPLE exclusively of her experience as Miss Texas. "They've been some of the biggest role models in my life."Sitting next to her mother on Zoom, Schiermeyer recalls attending the Miss Texas pageant as a young girl and watching from greenrooms backstage as Miss Texas hopefuls got ready to compete."I attended Miss Texas for as long as I basically have a memory," she says.
However, Schiermeyer says that, surprisingly, it wasn't her mother who first encouraged her to participate in Miss Texas.
Arian Archer Orlando
Sadie and her mother, Arian.
"I actually didn't start competing until I was 16," Schiermeyer reveals. "And a big part of that was because one of my high school friends, she was competing, and went on to win Miss America Teen. I got to see, through her, not just the glitz and the glam and all the behind-the-scenes, but I saw her actively serving her community. That is what pushed me to step from the observer lens to actually participating."
Schiermeyer competed in the Teen division for two years before competing "as a Miss" for two years.Orlando's path to pageant participation was similar to her daughter's. She participated in the very first Miss Teen Texas pageant while in high school, and later went on to participate in the Miss division."I was clueless," Orlando laughs, recalling her first foray into the world of pageantry. "I had no idea what I was doing."The first year she competed for the Miss Texas title, Orlando says she placed 37th out of 63. After returning the next year and winning the crown, Orlando says the scholarship money she earned paid for two years of school.
"It's life-changing," she says. Schiermeyer's scholarship money from the Miss Texas pageant has also enabled her to continue her education in a master's program at Dallas Baptist University.
Despite the obvious pageant bloodlines in the family, Orlando never wanted to force Schiermeyer to compete."Everybody always asked me why I never put her in pageants," Orlando tells PEOPLE. "And I'm like, 'Because I want her to want to do it. I don't want it to be because I did it.' So when she came to me and said, 'Hey, I'm thinking about doing this,' we talked about it and I was like, 'OK, I guess we're going down this road.'"
Arian Archer Orlando
Sadie and Arian.
"So we just got busy starting to get her ready and get her with the right people to coach her. It's paid off, obviously."Though the Miss Texas title runs in the family, Schiermeyer didn't necessarily feel pressure to compete from her mother. In fact, most of the pressure she experienced came from herself."I think that one of the things that our organization does so well is truly championing each girl that enters the role," she explains. "They really wanna fight for that girl to have the best experience possible and the best experience that fits her as possible. So even picking out wardrobe, going to Miss America, they would always ask me, 'Okay, does this feel like you or do you feel like somebody else is pressuring you to wear it?'"She and her mother's shared experience is only additive to her experience, never taking away or adding negative pressure to the competition.
"They've done a phenomenal job of making sure that while we wanna like highlight the legacy of this organization, because that is so impactful in getting to show the generational impact that this organization has," she says.
While competing at the Miss America pageant this year, Schiermeyer paid homage to both her mother and her great-grandmother by wearing a ring that belonged to her late relative."I never had the privilege of meeting her," Schiermeyer says of her great-grandmother. "She actually passed away on her way to watch my mom at Miss America."
Arian Archer Orlando
Sadie and Arian.
Schiermeyer also spoke about her mother on stage, detailing the Miss America reunions that her mother would host as she grew up."What I really want people to know as a legacy is that Miss America is still so impactful and it's still so powerful and that there is something innate to it that has lasted generations," she says.Though the pair had been involved in the pageant scene indirectly for many years, with Orlando continuing to remain involved as a volunteer and former Miss Texas, the landscape has changed, causing the pair to navigate new challenges, including social media.
"Social media didn't exist," she tells PEOPLE. "So having a presence online is something that was entirely new to both of us. I grew up with social media, but using social media as an advocate and as a leader is so much different than using social media [to show] pictures to your friend and family."Schiermeyer adds that there are darker sides to social media, recalling comments she has received online about her pageant makeup.
Arian Archer Orlando
Sadie and Arian.
Something similar happened to her Miss America competitor, Cassie Donegan, who beat Schiermeyer out for the competition, ultimately taking home the Miss America title."I recognized for the first time that people are not always the biggest encouragers or cheerleaders online. It's really easy to point out flaws," she says. "It made me really sad, but at the same time, that post opened up a whole new doorway into meeting new people, to having new followers, to get more attention so that I can spotlight that attention to things that are important. I've talked a lot about my story of overcoming an eating disorder and how that pushed me to pursue advocacy and health and wellness."When Miss Texas hopefuls compete nowadays, they must also advocate for a "community service" cause of their choice. This is something that Schiermeyer and Orlando explain was just emerging when Orlando was competing under the Miss America organization.
"I think the first Miss America to win with a platform was in 1989, so it was still a fairly new concept," Orlando explains. "We were fine-tuning that and how that would look under the Miss America system. Our scoring was a little bit different back in the day than it is now, which has its pros and cons. We were more focused on the platform and making sure that that was gonna be spearheaded the way it should be."
Arian Archer Orlando
Sadie and Arian.
Another change that the pair has navigated? The Miss Texas pageant no longer has a swimsuit competition portion. Not having to prepare for that, Schiermeyer says, took pressure off her.Schiermeyer, for her part, also believes that competitors now are "much more able to talk about our vulnerabilities" and "what [they have] struggled and grown from.""And using that as a superpower versus what it seems like back in her day was y'all had to be perfect," she says, turning to her mom. "You didn't really get to share as much about that."Life on the road as Miss Texas in the 1990s also came with other quirks that are slightly different from how the pageant operates now."They were a little bit more strict back in my day," Orlando laughs. "We had a chaperone with us all the time. Even when we went to Miss America, we had our own chaperone that stayed with us. We were there for two and a half weeks back in the day."
Arian Archer Orlando
Sadie and Arian.
Both of them acknowledge that, while much of the beauty pageant world has evolved, there are still many misconceptions about it as well."They say, 'Oh, she's so beautiful,'" Orlando explains, of people talking to her about Sadie. "And I'm like, 'Yeah, but it's so much more than that.' It's about intellect, it's about education, it's about all the training they do with interview and their talent. It is just so much more than just a beauty pageant."Being involved in the pageant world together has shaped the pair's relationship as well."There's one picture that floats around of us hugging backstage in the dressing room and there's another former Miss Texas in the background getting ready and putting her makeup on," Schiermeyer recalls. "That was something that I just admired so much and it was something that you got to welcome me into. That piece of it has not changed over the years. We get to bond over the superficial things like the ball gowns and like the wardrobe and all that good stuff.""You never tried to separate it, like, this is my thing and you're gonna do your thing," she says to her mother. "This is an opportunity and a platform that we both really admired and really enjoyed and really believed in. And we got to kind of walk that side of it together."
on People
Source: "AOL Lifestyle"
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