Roberta Chirko
Chirko next to her favorite painting at the Brown County Art Guild, a portrait of V. J. Cariani.
~ story and photo by Bob Gustin
Roberta Chirko was one of the top models in the world in 1995, gracing the covers of Vogue, Elle, and many other fashion magazines. That was also the year she married a rock star on stage before 50,000 people at the Farm Aid concert.
Then she and husband Toby Myers moved to Brown County, settling in a rural home where the yard, she said, was mainly mud. She couldn’ t get the theme song to the old TV show“ Green Acres” out of her head.
But after years of fast night life and all that goes with it, Roberta knew it was time for a lifestyle change.
“ I needed to stop,” she said.“ I was 104 pounds then, I was working too much, staying up too late and doing all the bad stuff you’ re not supposed to be doing. So, it was life-saving when he brought me here.”
Roberta is now the mom of a high school senior, gallery manager at the Brown County Art Guild, and still married to Myers, former bass guitarist for John Mellencamp.
“ This community has really made me grow up to be a better person, I think. I’ ve learned so much in the last 20 years.” she said.“ I probably would have died if I’ d stayed in New York City, and this gave me another opportunity to grow.”
Roberta was born in Lyons, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, to plasterer Bob Chirko and his wife Donna, a fashionable dresser who loved parties. Roberta said she was more reserved, taking after her father, and spent her childhood years as a free spirit left to her own devices, dressed in flannel shirts and roaming the neighborhood. When she was 11, she moved with her mother to Washington, Pennsylvania, after the divorce of her parents.
That’ s how she wound up in the audience of a fashion show
24 Our Brown County March / April 2017