92-year-old Plainview grandma is the foul-mouthed comic you didn’t see coming

Beverly Munter met a very attractive Greek guy at a restaurant (she thinks he owned a diner), and they had a great date. Then two weeks went by without a word, and she was upset.

“But then I read in an obituary in Newsday that he had died,” the 92-year-old Plainview woman tells audiences. “I felt so much better.”

That’s Munter’s brand of humor, and it’s been getting hearty laughs from crowds at Governor’s Comedy Club, where she recently performed on the main stage after completing her third run through the club’s eight-week comedy college.

No, Munter is not your ordinary 92-year-old woman. She’s not playing Bingo at the local Knights of Columbus or knitting sweaters in a rocking chair. She’s telling dirty jokes to a room full of strangers, and she’s loving every minute of it.

“Beverly is the feisty, funny, foul-mouthed Grandma we all wish we had,” said John Trueson, a self-described “comedy lifer,” who handles new talent for Governor’s and has been teaching comedy “college” at the club for the last two decades.

Trueson added that Munter loves making people laugh and that “she’s the funniest 92-year-old I know!”

“Now, I’m doing comedy to just keep in touch with the stage and because it’s fun,” said Munter, who first took the comedy course when she was 80. She took a second time last year at 91.

“I like being on stage, and that’s why I’m returning,” she said.

Munter said she told her daughter, “Before I leave this world, I want to keep doing it (entertaining) as much as I can. I love it. I love it.”

One source of Munter’s comedy is her numerous doctor’s visits. “Because I end up in lots of doctor’s offices, I close the door and entertain the help,” she beamed.

She added that many of her doctors, nurses and aides end up sitting — and laughing — in the audience at her shows.

Now retired, Munter, who was born in Hollis, Queens, worked as a vice president for a medical and dental insurance company based in Hicksville from 1975 to about 2010.

While she recalls it was a “blessing” to finally leave the company after decades of hard work, she also said her decades in the workforce helped prepare her for doing stand-up comedy.

“I did all of the roasts for people who were leaving the company,” she said.

In comedy parlance, a “roast” is a type of insult comedy in which a specific individual, usually the guest of honor or “roastee,” is subjected to jokes, mocking remarks and other criticisms.

“I wasn’t off-color then, but I am now,” she said. “I’m playing to a different type of audience.”

Recalling her family’s showbiz roots, Munter said her dad was a traveling salesman, and his brother had worked on stage in vaudeville.

She also recalled that her mom was a tango dancer in Harlem who performed at the iconic Apollo Theater.

As part of her set, Munter quips about online dating. She tells audiences that she calls her current partner “44” and explains that of the 1,200 men she’s connected with in online dating apps such as JDate, a Jewish dating site, and Match.com, she has only dated 44 of them. So her current partner, H. Barry Waldman, an accomplished professor of dentistry who taught at Stony Brook University, is “44.”

Before meeting Waldman, Munter was married for 51 years and raised two children. Her son Rick is a dentist on Long Island and her daughter Holly works as an executive in New York City.

Her husband, Paul was an aeronautical engineer who worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base when the couple lived in Dayton, Ohio, before they moved to Long Island in the 1950s. He died in 2004.

Adding to her “out there” persona, Munter explained she has always been very involved with the Roswell files and Area 51 — the highly classified U.S. Air Force testing facility linked to extraterrestrial conspiracy theories and alleged government cover-ups of aliens landing on Earth.

Munter said unabashedly that “we’re not the only ones out there.”

“People think I’m out of my mind when I talk to people about this,” she said.

After she was widowed, her daughter helped her create a presentation for local libraries called “How to Make Your Private Life Public.” Munter basically led seminars on how to meet and greet people when you’re older. It wasn’t specifically comedy, but it was nonetheless humorous material.

“I helped people meet through these presentations. I talked a lot about sex,” Munter recalled, noting that Holly also took the comedy college class at Governor’s. “My daughter told me to get involved in comedy. She said to me, ‘Mom, before you kick the bucket, you should perform stand-up comedy.'”

“I’ve always been very comfortable on stage. I love it,” Munter continued. “I guess I’m what they call a ham.”

Governor’s Laugh-Off returns for 15th year

For upcoming Beverly Munter performances and tickets, visit govs.com.

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_{Top: courtesy photo of Beverly Munter}