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Meet Carol Heiss, the U.S. Olympic Figure Skating Champion Who's a Member of Figure Skating Royalty

Long before Mirai Nagasu’s milestone triple axel, U.S. figure skater Carol Heiss made history as the first woman to land a double axel in competition. In 1956, she took silver at the Winter Games in Cortina, Italy — second to American Tenley Albright.

Four years later, at the Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, she brought home the gold.

“It was sort of a whirlwind,” Carol Heiss recalled of her Olympic year, speaking to figure skating podcaster Allison Manley. But she does remember that after getting her medal, it was back to work — just two hours later.

“I was in my room drinking champagne when my coach Pierre Brunet called and told me to be at the rink. When I got there, he made me go through my program and correct the things I hadn’t done perfectly,” Heiss told PEOPLE in 1992. “He said, ‘I want you to remember this. You’ve won. But winning opens doors too. Take the doors, don’t rest on your gold medal.’”

Back in New York City, Heiss was treated to a ticker-tape parade and presented the keys to her hometown. But all the hoopla following her win didn’t turn her head — fellow Olympian Hayes Jenkins already had. Jenkins, a figure skater from Akron, Ohio, had won his own gold medal at the Winter Games in Cortina Italy, in 1956, the same year he and Heiss began dating.

Carol Heiss Jenkins
Carol Heiss Jenkins

The couple were secretly engaged when Heiss was competing in 1960; that year her future brother-in-law, David Jenkins, took the gold in men’s figure skating. Weeks later, Hayes and Carol married in New York, then moved to Ohio, where Jenkins practiced law. Heiss, after raising three children, embarked on a coaching career. David Jenkins later became a doctor.

PEOPLE‘s special issue The Best of Olympic Figure Skating is available now in the Meredith store, on Amazon, and wherever magazines are sold.

The whole family is featured in PEOPLE’s new special issue The Best of Olympic Figure Skating. Today, both Jenkinses—Hayes, 84, and David, 81 — have retired, but Heiss, 77, still coaches. Some of her past students include Timothy Goebel (bronze at 2002 Games), Tonia Kwiatkowski (1996 silver at U.S. Nationals) and Miki Ando, a Japanese national champion.

“There’s something about walking into the rink,” she told Manley in 2012. “I can be tired, [but] I’ll get there and I’ll just feel wonderful.”