Portraits by Shawn LaChapelle

It’s a rainy Tuesday in October, and under her coat, Michele Riggi is wearing a matching two-piece Santa Claus workout set. She swings her Ford F-150 King Ranch into a front parking spot at Lake Placid’s Fitness Revolution shortly before 9am, waits a few minutes, and walks purposefully inside to meet Seth Lang, one of her three personal trainers, who’s holding the Christmas sweater Michele bought him last holiday season. He’s been instructed to bring it to today’s workout, which Michele has decided will be Christmas-themed in honor of the previous day’s holiday-themed photo shoot. Seth, clearly, learned long ago not to question his most flamboyant (and persuasive) client, and pulls the sweater, which bears a skull wearing a Santa hat, over his chest-length brown hair. This, it would seem, is just an average day living in the orbit of Michele Riggi.

Fitness Revolution is what Michele describes as a “Rocky Balboa gym”—a no-frills, windowless back room dominated by free weights and barbells. It’s a far cry from the light-filled home gym she used to work out in, with its Pilates reformer, flat-screen TV, and steam shower. Of course, that gym was hardly the most impressive room in Palazzo Riggi, the 20,000-square-foot Saratoga mansion where Michele lived with her husband, Ron, for nearly 20 years. But when Ron passed away in 2022 and Michele moved to the couple’s property in Lake Placid, she left that life behind.

“I don’t have what I used to have up here, and it’s good,” she says. “It keeps me very humble. And I enjoy the mountain life. I really love it. I miss Saratoga. I miss my life there. How could I not? But I look at myself as being so blessed to be able to live two lives.”

For anyone who lived in Saratoga in the first two decades of the 21st century, Michele Riggi was a household name. Known for her elaborate, 400-person galas that raised money for her beloved National Museum of Dance, and her even more elaborate North Broadway home, she was the heiress apparent to socialite Marylou Whitney, the Queen of Saratoga.

The daughter of a nun turned dance studio owner and a General Electric steamfitter, Michele grew up middle-class in the town of Broadalbin. But she always imagined a bigger life than the one into which she was born. “I’ve always been a dreamer,” she says. “I always wanted the glamour and the stardom…to be someone.” She was a dancer from an early age, and in early adulthood danced off-Broadway, modeled, and taught dance for a company called Dancers of America. She was 19, commuting to New York City to dance three days a week and working at the Cock ’n Bull in Galway on weekends when she met Ron, a customer of the restaurant who owned a successful business with his twin brother. “It was a love-at-first-sight kind of thing,” Michele says. “There were 15 years between us. Nowadays, that’s nothing, but back in the day, that was a lot. He was like, ‘Do you want to starve your whole life being a dancer, or do you want to come and be my wife and have this Cinderella life?’ Who would say no to that? So I’m like, ‘Uh, yeah, I think I’m going to sign up for that one.’” 

They were married when Michele was 20, and went on to have four children: Rochele, Roslyn, Vincent, and Christopher. When the kids were young, they lived on an apple orchard in Charlton that was farmed by a neighbor. Ron traveled a lot for work, sometimes for weeks at a time, and Michele was a full-time mom, a role she wholeheartedly embraced. “She did it all,” says her daughter Roslyn Latulippe, a chef who still lives in Saratoga. “She was always there. She was the president of the PTA and very involved in all the things we ever did. Every year in the fall there was a school field trip to my house, because she’d let everybody come and pick apples.”

Eventually, the family moved to Interlaken, on Lake Lonely, and the kids started going to Saratoga schools. By that point, Ron’s business had proven lucrative, and in 2003, the Riggis spent $6 million to build Palazzo Riggi, Michele’s dream home. By then, the kids had all graduated from high school, and Michele had more time to devote to other endeavors: namely, the National Museum of Dance, where she served as board president, and her dogs. “We started out with one Chihuahua when I was in eighth grade,” Roslyn says. “And then it multiplied to, you know, a lot of dogs.” At its peak, Michele and Ron’s pack of dogs—many of them rescues with health problems, most of them Chihuahuas—totaled 43. They all slept with Ron and Michele in a 9-by-11-foot bed the couple had custom-made. At one point, Michele was in talks with the network E! about a reality show focused on Palazzo Riggi and its canine residents, but she ultimately backed out.

Over the years, the Riggis drew a lot of criticism for their ostentatious North Broadway home; in addition to the state-of-the-art home gym, the stone mansion boasts six bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, two Clive Christian kitchens, an elevator, a home theater, a bowling alley, a double staircase, outdoor fountains, a pool house, a koi pond, and a radiant-heated tiled yard. When they purchased an adjacent property and leveled the historic home that stood on it in 2010, they received even more heat, especially from the city’s preservationists.

But the Riggis also gave generously. While Michele served as the president of the National Museum of Dance board, Ron chaired the SPAC board and served on the YMCA board. In 2005, the couple pledged $100,000 a year for five years to SPAC and continued giving at that level even after the five years were up; the same year, they teamed up with Ron’s brother to donate $1 million to the new Saratoga YMCA on West Avenue. Michele spent money locally whenever possible, shopping at local stores including Pink Paddock, Antara Home, Frivolous, Staci Snider, and Saratoga Trunk. And on Halloween—an annual community spectacle at which Michele would dress up as Cinderella and give away custom-made candy bars, 10 of which had a $100 bill inside, to hundreds of Saratoga families—she’d gift free family memberships to the Y to anyone who guessed the weight of a giant pumpkin (or got close to it). 

“She always made everything very magical,” says Roslyn, who now, like her mother, goes all out on holiday decorations. “Every holiday, every birthday, every little thing was always a big thing.”

Michele’s Saratoga fairy tale came to an end when Ron passed away at the age of 80 in August 2022. She listed the Saratoga home for $17.9 million the following month and moved to the couple’s Lake Placid property—a 47-acre, five-structure compound called Casa del Paradiso that overlooks the Olympic Ski Jumping Complex. Palazzo Riggi wound up selling at auction to businessman Joe Gross for $7.1 million in 2023. It was relisted in 2025 for $24.9 million, but has since been taken off the market. Casa del Paradiso, which was listed for $31.1 million a month before Ron’s death in 2022 and never sold, was put back on the market for $6.9 million in May 2025. The price has since been lowered to $6,250,000.

“There are a lot of things in my life that haven’t been great, but you know what? You put your head up and you keep moving forward,” Michele says. “I adored our life. But unfortunately, life doesn’t last forever. People don’t live forever. And some people get stuck and can’t move on. I’m very fortunate that I’m not one of those people.”

These days, Michele calls Lake Placid home. She lives in the main house of the compound her family vacationed at for decades with her boyfriend, Devin James, a bearded tree climber from St. Lawrence County, and their seven dogs: Alice, LuLu, Lamb Chop, Timothy, Jake, Taffy, and Simba. Michele met Devin when his friend, her real estate agent, invited him to a meeting with her in the treehouse located on her property. They knew of each other, since they both frequented the Lake Placid watering hole Lisa G’s, but Devin didn’t have social media, and therefore didn’t know much about Michele’s life in Saratoga.

“The only thing I knew is that you loved dogs,” Devin says over dinner at Lisa G’s, answering a question I’d asked but talking directly to Michele. “And that you were fun, easygoing…That was it.”

“He wanted to know me,” Michele adds, her tone indicating that this came as a bit of a surprise to her at the time.

“You wanted to know me,” Devin corrects her, cockily.

“He thinks he’s more important than I am,” Michele says, jokingly. “But guess what: He’s not.”

This sort of playful chemistry, Michele says, was immediate; she and Devin have been a couple ever since meeting in the treehouse.

It’d be reasonable to assume that such a major life change—moving from a town in which you’re basically a celebrity to one in which you’re largely unknown—would fundamentally alter a person. But those who know Michele best say she’s the same person she’s always been.

“I always refer to her as a chameleon, because you can put her in any position, any situation, and she adapts,” says Roslyn. “The past couple of years have been difficult for her, and she’s made the absolute best of them. I’m sure there are pieces of her life that she misses—obviously, my father. But I also feel like she’s where she should be in life right now.”

A typical day in Michele’s “second life” begins at 5:30 or 6am, when she gets up to get coffee—or, rather, frothed Chobani creamer with a splash of coffee. She gets back in bed with all the dogs (only two “chosen ones” actually sleep with her now), and kills an hour or so scrolling on Instagram, checking her email, or flipping through photos on her phone, before getting up to feed the “pupperinos.” Then it’s off to Fitness Revolution for strength and mobility training—she wears a different seasonally appropriate workout outfit, like the Santa one, every day—followed by errands, such as dropping off packages at UPS or doing her “zip-through” of Marshalls to “see if there’s anything I must have.” (When I saw her stash of meticulously folded reusable bags in her truck, I mistakenly assumed they were for grocery shopping. Turns out, they’re for Marshalls; Michele orders all her groceries on Instacart.)

It’s in the afternoons that Michele gets down to business as “Cindy”—the salt-of-the-earth alter ego to Cinderella, her Saratoga persona that had a staff to keep her house in order. Now, Cindy does all the cleaning. “I’m obsessed with laundry,” she says. “I must do eight loads of laundry a day. I have to wash all the dog beds, and my sheets, and my clothes have to be done separately, and Devin’s clothes have to be done separately, and my towels, and then I have to fold everything. So Cindy’s very busy.” While Michele (aka Cindy) takes care of all the indoor chores at her compound’s five buildings, one of which she rents out on Airbnb, Devin largely handles the outdoor tasks. They tackle larger home improvement projects together.

“That was one thing I was impressed and shocked by,” says Devin. “I do carpentry, tree work…all this stuff. She was game to do everything. All of her dog statues at the end of the driveway? I taught her how to form the concrete and place rebar and then pour the concrete, and she did every step of it. We built these beautiful live-edge wooden shelves at the house. She milled them with the track saw, sanded them—did everything. She wants to learn it all. And I want to teach her everything.” 

Another thing that shocked Devin and his friends, who call themselves “The Dirtbags,” was Michele’s willingness to tag along on their annual camping trip. “We were all very surprised, because it’s camping on an island,” says Jason McComber, a longtime friend of Devin’s who also happens to own Fitness Revolution and train Michele two days a week. “And, of course, she came with, like, a cot, and tea lights to light the path to the tent. But she was happy to do it. Now, if you didn’t know the history, you would think she’s been with our group forever.”

Michele is used to surprising people, though.

“When you get to know anybody, you realize that you can’t judge a book by its cover,” says Gay Fellows, a former Saratogian who became friends with Michele after purchasing a home in Lake Placid about 10 years ago. “That’s never been truer than with Michele. She has this quality of being ever so much more than you see on the surface. And she’s got a great sense of humor; she laughs at herself as well as any human being I’ve ever known.”

Gay remembers a time when Michele was having a garage sale at the end of her driveway in Lake Placid. When she stopped by, Michele was sitting on the tailgate of her truck with a group of little girls, flipping through Posh Palazzo Pups, the coffee table book she wrote about her dogs in 2009. “That,” Gay says, “is the Michele Riggi that people don’t see.”

While Michele may have a hidden side, that certainly doesn’t mean that the side people do see—the side that would change into three different outfits at the same National Museum of Dance gala and is now prone to channeling all her creative party-planning energy into throwing elaborate dinner parties for her family and friends—isn’t 100 percent authentic.

Gay remembers the first time she was at a Fourth of July cookout at Michele’s house, and offered to work the grill flipping hamburgers and hot dogs. “She forced me into a frilly apron,” she says. “I said, ‘Michele, I can’t wear that.’ I don’t know her that well, and I’m like, people are going to see a picture of this. And she said, ‘My house, my rules.’ I remember looking over at her mother and saying, ‘When did she get like this?’ Her mother looked at me sort of sideways and said, ‘Gay, she’s been like this forever.’”

Susan Dake, another friend of Michele’s, can attest. “I think her line was, ‘More is more,’ not ‘less is more,’” she says.

“I always refer to her as a cartoon character,” says Roslyn, whose son calls Michele “Fancy Mimi.” “She’s, like, larger than life.”

Perhaps what’s most surprising, though, given the vitriol she’s received online over the years, is Michele’s affinity for people.

At Lisa G’s, she knows all the waitstaff by name, and when Jason shows up with his wife, Crystal, she invites them to pull up chairs and sit with us. In fact, when Jason and Crystal met her for the first time (also at Lisa G’s—notice a trend here?), he remembers she spent the entire hour and a half asking them questions. Roslyn remembers, when her dad was alive and her parents would go out to dinner, that they’d sit at the bar most of the time. “They just loved engaging with people,” she says. “It didn’t matter who they met. They just loved people.”

And a lot of the time, people loved them back. Michele, it would seem, can make friends anywhere. She met her longtime hairdresser (and friend), Ann Marie Chimiak, when Ann Marie was working at a bank in 1998. “She came into the bank to get money to buy shoes,” Ann Marie says. “And she looks at me and goes, ‘You don’t really look like a banker.’ And I go, ‘Well, technically, I’m a hairstylist and makeup artist; I’m going to open a salon in Saratoga one day.’ And she goes, ‘Well, when you do, call me, and I’m coming to you.’” Five years later, Ann Marie ran into Michele and Ron having martinis at Forno Bistro. “I went up to her and said, ‘Hi, do you remember me?’ She’s like, ‘Oh my God, you’re the banker lady.’ And I go, ‘Yes, I finally opened my salon.’ That was it. I started doing her hair.” 

Michele met another of her longtime friends, Joseph Saucier, when he was working at the Gianni Versace store in Boston in 1995. She went on to introduce him to Saratoga’s social scene, and even threw him a surprise 50th birthday party at her home, complete with a drag queen and themed food stations. When she heard that Joseph had been diagnosed with cancer, she hopped in her car and drove to Boston. “She’s a beautiful person,” Joseph says. “I will protect her as she is my sister.”

And then there’s Dr. Joy Lucas, Michele’s veterinarian, who, during the years the Riggis had upwards of three-dozen dogs, would go to their home’s onsite clinic for three days three times a year to vet all the dogs. “I had been working in the area for maybe four years, and I was pretty much a homebody,” Joy says of her early days in Saratoga. “I went to work and I went home. But Michele changed my professional and personal life. I did a complete 180—I was going to all the events and out to dinner, and I got to know Saratoga through her eyes. I fell in love with Saratoga in a meaningful way that I don’t know would have happened organically for quite some time.” 

It’s been four years since Michele moved out of Saratoga. The National Museum of Dance, which closed during the pandemic, was discovered to have an unstable foundation, and never reopened. Two of Michele’s favorite shops, Staci Snider and Pink Paddock, have moved or announced plans to close. And, as of now, there doesn’t appear to be anyone in line to take over the title of “Queen of Saratoga.”

“When she moved away, our town lost a woman who poured love into the community,” says Ann Marie, who still does her hair. “She supported local shops, florists, decorators, and caterers, making them part of her philanthropy and gift-giving. The holidays have not had the same pizzazz without her, and there hasn’t been a gala since that has measured up to what she would throw.”

Of course, Saratoga is still Saratoga, and Lake Placid is only two hours away. Michele still comes down to get her hair done at Ann Marie’s Crown Salon, bring her dogs to Dr. Joy, visit Roslyn and her grandson, attend concerts at SPAC, and go to the track. When she’s here, she stays at The Adelphi Hotel. “When I go to the Adelphi for two nights, I’m Cinderella,” she says. “I love being in beautiful bedding, on Broadway, loving life, enjoying Saratoga. It’s like a little dream. It’s like going away on vacation—to my home.” This summer, she invited one of the Adelphi bellmen and a couple of his friends to stay at her guest house. “They were supposed to go hiking,” she says. “Guess what they did? Hung out with me. We had the best time.”

As Michele finishes off her half of the cheeseburger she split with Devin at Lisa G’s, I ask her a question that seems to stump her: Did she want a future in Saratoga, and does she feel that she’s lost something by not having that future?

“Good question,” Devin says when she doesn’t respond.

She’s silent for a moment longer. “Well,” she says finally, “I’m not done. But I don’t know what the next chapter is.”

“Do you foresee staying in Lake Placid?” I ask, thinking of her Lake Placid compound’s live listing on Zillow.

“I don’t know,” she says again. “But I have so much to give. We have so much to give. You’re not dead until you’re dead. You have to live life every day to its fullest. Every day we get up and we’re like, ‘One more day’—we’re going to have the most fun we can ever have that day. You need to be like that. Otherwise, why live? What is the point?”

The next morning at Fitness Revolution, right as her workout is about to start, Michele roots around in her bag and pulls out two items. The first is a blue bottle of Saratoga Water, which she asks Seth to open for her. The second? It’s a Santa shirt for me.

I put it on.