Grandma Was 91 When She Got Her First Passport. Now at 96, She’s Been to Every Continent with Her Grandson

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• This fall, a 96-year-old grandmother and her grandson just finished visiting all seven continents

• Grandma Joy, as she’s known, first went viral while traveling to all 63 national parks in the U.S. with her grandson, Brad Ryan

• During their journey, they’ve seen temples and elephants, even as they healed from a past estrangement

After an Ohio grandmother became a viral sensation for traveling to all 63 national parks in the United States with her grandson — making history as the oldest person to do so — the pair weren’t ready to stop traveling. Now, at 96, she can say she’s visited all seven continents.

“It was fun to think we were going to finally reach the end of the road,” Joy Ryan, known as “Grandma Joy,” tells PEOPLE of visiting Thailand and then Australia, the last continent on her list, with her grandson, Brad Ryan, in September.

“It’s a beautiful, beautiful country, and all these little koalas — they’re so cute,” she adds.

Finally achieving her goal was also a point of pride.

“Well, old girl, you finally made it,” Joy remembers thinking to herself.

Joy and Brad, a 45-year-old veterinarian, have amassed more than 100,000 followers on Instagram as they share photos taken in front of waterfalls and temples across the globe.

But for the grandmother and grandson, who hail from southeastern Ohio, the quest has also been a more than decade-long journey of healing after years of estrangement.

In Brad’s memoir, Grandma Joy and Me: A Journey of Healing, One National Park at a Time, which was published by Simon & Schuster in June, he recounts growing up as a nerdy kid who would rather read than play sports in the foothills of Appalachia.

Only later did he realize he was gay, but he grew up feeling rejected by his father, who divorced his mom and has since died.

Filled with hurt, Brad separated himself from his dad’s side of the family “because the pain was so deep.” That included his grandma, Joy.

After 10 years apart, in the fall of 2015, Brad reached out to his grandma and asked a life-changing question: Did she want to go camping with him in the Great Smoky Mountains?

Brad knew she’d never seen a mountain before and wanted to help satisfy her adventurous spirit, which he also had in abundance. Since then, they’ve traveled to the dozens of national parks located throughout the country, visiting their last one in May 2023.

When Joy received her first passport at the age of 91, the voyage continued.

She and Brad flew to a range of locales, from encountering elephants in Kenya to walking through historic castles in Ireland. Most recently, they touched down in Thailand, where they enjoyed conversing with Buddhist monks.

“I never expected to meet someone like him,” says Joy, who was also mesmerized by the temples that can’t be found in Duncan Falls. “It was nice of him to take time out of his busy day to talk to us.”

For Brad, the conversations he had with one young monk were incredibly affirming.

“That monk spoke to the interconnectedness of all of us,” says Brad, “and the importance of not fixating so much on the past, which is what I spent so much of my life doing.”

The 45-year-old says he “suffered tremendously” by not moving beyond past pain, but through their globe-trotting journey, he’s been able to “create a new chapter of joy” in his life.

Australia was equally beautiful, and Joy loved seeing koalas, including their babies, known as joeys.

The pair was able to travel to the last two continents by partnering with Road Scholar, a not-for-profit educational travel organization that serves older adults.

“The world is full of inspiring septuagenarians, octogenarians, nonagenarians that are just crushing it,” says Brad, who is grateful for the organization’s support. “And you find, when you meet these people, that you see your own potential for aging so much differently.”

Why worry about gray hair when you still have air in your lungs, he asks.

After all of her travel, Joy may love the waterfalls she’s seen most. “The Lord made them,” she says, “and man didn’t have the one thing to do with them.”

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But she’s also been moved by the people she’s encountered, who have told her she’s inspired them to do things they’d never dreamed of doing before.

” ‘We’ve started a new journey, and it’s because of you,’ ” Joy recalls being told. “And I said, ‘Thank you. That makes me feel very proud.’ “

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