Ariana Rodriguez shares an emotional story of her journey to the crown.

The first time I saw Miss Kentucky, Ariana Rodriguez, it was in a photo of her getting crowned as the 2025 winner. She had a look of astonishment on her face; happy—no, ecstatic—and surprised all rolled into one.

The first time I met her, however, it was far from the lights of the pageant stage but rather in front of an old, abandoned house in Muldraugh, Kentucky, a place where she once lived as a middle school-age child.

I couldn't help but think how far life had taken her, from living in that dilapidated old house with no running water and no electricity, to the recognition and accolades that came with being named Miss Kentucky.  

Her story is amazing, and she shared much of it with me during a recent Kentucky Farm Bureau (KFB) News podcast. I first asked her how she felt the minute she was named as the new Miss Kentucky.

“I was just completely in shock and didn't believe it,” she said. “In fact, in all of the videos that my friends and family took from the audience or from online, they're saying, ‘She's going to pass out. She's going to pass out,’ because I was just sitting there shaking.”

Rodriguez said it took about a month for the complete acknowledgement of it all to sink in.

“It felt like a dream, and every single day I just woke up and I was like, ‘Is this really happening?’”

In fact, it was, and it is more than a dream, but the road she had to endure to get to this point in her life was often unsettled at best, and heartbreaking, at times.

Rodriguez spent much of her childhood in foster care due to unfortunate family circumstances and would eventually, for a period of time, become homeless. 

“I'm the first alumnus of the foster care system to ever win the title of Miss Kentucky,” she said. “When I was five years old, I went into kinship care for the first time, which is similar to foster care except you're placed with relatives or people who knew you before you went into the court system.”

Rodriguez remained in kinship care for eight years and entered foster care at the age of 12.

“I entered foster care because my providers just couldn’t afford to take care of us, but I was separated from my brother and sister, and that was extremely difficult,” she said. “Being in foster care is difficult enough, but when you're separated from the only life you've ever known, and on top of that, you're separated from the only family that you've ever known, it was really difficult for me.”

Rodriguez would exit the foster care system, only to become homeless at 16 years old.

“My mother had a difficult life and was also homeless at 16, so this is a very systemic issue,” she said.

Rodriguez’s mother had turned to drugs in her life but would eventually come clean; however, affording three small children was difficult at best and often impossible.  

"It wasn't that my mom and grandma didn't care for us; they just couldn't afford financially to provide for us," she said. 

 But she had the determination to make her way out of these unfortunate and very difficult life occurrences.

“During my senior year of high school, I knew that I wanted to go to college, and up until that point, I thought that I was eligible for the foster care tuition waiver,” she said. “But I found out that I exited the program about 26 days too early to receive any financial support. Over 14 years in the system, and 26 days too early. It was really hard for me.”

As I listened to her story, I couldn't help but think that a lot of people would have given up at this point. It was one more setback in a long line of setbacks. But I could tell there was something about this young lady that was different from most people. She was determined to make a better life for herself. 

 “During high school, knowing I wanted to go to college, I began to look online for talent competitions because I love to sing,” Rodriguez said.

That search would lead her to discover the Miss Kentucky organization, which she originally thought was a talent contest. Little did she know she was about to enter the pageant world, and life would take a major turn for her.

“I saw that there was a $20,000 scholarship with the pageant and I signed up that day,” Rodriguez said. “It was the scholarship that initially caught my eye. So, I put all of my college savings into competing in the local preliminary competition, and I lost.”

Feeling as though she had also lost her only chance of getting to college, she soon found mentorship from a host of people who helped her to the next level of the pageant.

“That took me to Miss Kentucky my first year and gave me the leverage to be able to get job positions so that I could pay for it myself the next two years,” Rodriguez said.

It was on the third try that luck came her way, and the rest, as they say, is history. In being a part of this organization, participants have a cause or platform that they present, and because of her life story, bringing attention to the foster care program was an easy choice for her.

 “My platform is ‘The Lucky Ones Foundation,’ and it's a nonprofit that I designed during my senior year of high school to educate the public about the issues of the foster care system and amplify the voices of those who've experienced it themselves,” Rodriguez said. “Two of the most prominent initiatives of the foundation include ‘The Suitcase Project’ where we collect suitcases for youth in foster care, and we fill them with essential items that they need when transitioning from home to home, and ‘The Lucky Ones’ podcast, a platform that I designed to educate the public about the issues of the foster care system.”

By the way, her dream of going to college has also come true as she is currently a student at the University of Kentucky and Rodriguez’s family is also doing well and quite proud of her accomplishments, she says.

As with all Miss Kentuckys, Rodriguez became a spokesperson for the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, something that has kept her quite busy, especially with the State Fair having just wrapped up. Now with a very short time to rest, she will be on her way to the Miss America Pageant.

This edition of the Kentucky Farm Bureau News will go to print before we know the results of Miss America, but Ariana Rodriguez is a winner in my book. She counts herself as one of the lucky ones, thus the name of her foundation. But anyone who gets to know her and her story can count themselves as being very lucky, too.