Michelle Brennan

Brennan's pageant life began where most directors' do — on the other side of the stage. She competed as a young person, and through those experiences she says she "always dreamed of one day giving back by mentoring and encouraging young people through a pageant of my own." The dream kept, unspent, for years.

Then the City of Reynoldsburg took over the Reynoldsburg Tomato Festival, and the opportunity arrived on its own terms. "Taking over the pageant was a natural fit," she says — a way to combine her passion for pageantry with her desire to mentor, inspire, and empower the next generation.

Taking over the pageant was a natural fit.

She has directed the Reynoldsburg Tomato Festival Royalty Pageant since 2019. Thirteen titles are crowned in all — a Tomato Festival Queen and King at the top, junior and little divisions beneath them, and two Senior Royalty titles, a telling inclusion from a director who spends her working days among older adults. The crowned royalty represent the festival at city events through the year and travel to others around the state.

It did not begin at thirteen. Her first year crowned a smaller slate, and she changed the entries from the outset. Covid took 2020 out entirely. By 2021 the count stood at thirteen, the divisions redrawn to reach from the first graders to community members over 65 — a pageant that now takes in most of a town's ages in one evening.

The part she is quietest about is the arithmetic. There is no entry fee. Every candidate — crowned or not — leaves with a royalty shirt, a custom goody bag, and a flower, simply for entering. "It is nice to continue to give all candidates and crowned royalty time to shine," she says.

One goal is still ahead of her, and she names it without softening: she would love to provide scholarships to the high school winners, and has not been able to achieve that yet. She keeps it on the list.

Her working life runs alongside it. Brennan spent years as the administrative assistant in the Parks and Recreation Department for the City of Reynoldsburg, and on September 1, 2026, she took over as Senior Center Manager — a job that has her looking after one end of a community while her pageant looks after the other.

At home there is a husband — twenty-two years married this spring — three sons, and a dog. "I am a daughter, a wife, a mother, plus more," she says — which is roughly the job description of every director who ever built something a whole town shows up for.