Lois Nicotra was a newlywed working as an elementary school teacher and studying for her master’s degree when her husband Richard asked her to help balance the books of his fledging business.
“When we first got married, he was running his first store in Manhattan and asked me to help with the payroll,” Nicotra said, detailing the Everything Yogurt franchise her husband launched on Wall Street in 1975. “We lived in the tiniest two-room apartment then and I did it all by hand sitting on the edge of the bed using the ironing board as my desk.”