Persistence can pay off. Or, sometimes, luck strikes when you least expect it. Whatever the case, the fact is that there are some great success stories involving people who were middle-aged or older when everything came together for them.

These “second act” success stories certainly deserve applause – and maybe they are worth emulating!

Celebrity chef Julia Child was a very much an adult when she wrote her first cookbook. She was 49 and had had a colourful career in the United States Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the CIA, during World War 2 and beyond, before reigniting a passion for French cuisine which led to a second career as an author and television personality.

As you may have seen in the film The Founder, starring Michael Keaton, salesman Ray Kroc was 52 in 1954 when he bought a small chain of burger restaurants called McDonald’s.

Kroc guided them to become the fast-food behemoth we know today.

In the world of film and television, Betty White was 51 when she got her big break as recurring character Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1973.

But that was just the start. She was 63 when she hit the big time in The Golden Girls in 1985. (Fun fact: her character Rose Nyland was only 55.)

Ronald Reagan was 54 in 1965 when he announced he was going to run for Governor of California. He won and, of course, later became President of the United States at the age of 69 – an office he held until he was 77.

Christoph Waltz didn’t hit the A-list as an actor until he was 53 and was cast in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.

In 1996, Judith Scheindlin, 53, retired as a family court judge and started banging the gavel on the hit TV series Judge Judy. In 2013, she was the highest-paid star on US television. Her follow-up program, Judy Justice, is still in production. 

Kris Jenner was 52 when she met television presenter and producer Ryan Seacrest in 2007 to pitch the idea for a reality TV show featuring her extended family.

The resulting program was titled Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and you’d have to have been living on Mars not to know about it.

In the business world, Taikichiro Mori was a Japanese academic who became a real-estate investor in the mid-1950s at the age of 51.

His Mori Building Company grew quickly, and he was named the richest man in the world in 1992, with a net worth of US$13 billion.

Late bloomers don’t come better named than Wally Blume, who started his own ice-cream company, Denali Flavors, at age 57 in 1995. Within 15 years, the company was reporting annual revenue of US$80 million.

A more familiar name in the world of fast food is Colonel Harland Sanders, who was 62 in 1952 when he first franchised Kentucky Fried Chicken.

In the arts, Bram Stoker was 50 when he wrote Dracula in 1897, paving the way for hundreds of screen adaptations of his own work and inspiring thousands of other vampire stories.

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the first of her Little House on the Prairie books in 1932 when she was 65. Her books were popular in the US, and the subsequent mid-1970s TV series was a global hit.

Anna “Grandma” Moses began painting at the age of 78 and her art became popular in the 1950s. In 2006, one of her works sold for $1.2 million.

And last, but certainly not least, Harry Bernstein was an obscure writer who finally achieved fame at the age of 96 for his 2007 memoir, The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers.

Of course, there are many barriers to success in this world, but age need not be one of them.

Sources: Business Insider, Enterprise League, The Ladders

Photograph: The Golden Girls (NBC)