Elly McGuire is looking for her greatest second chance.

In 1978, she met Dan Rowan — one of the hosts of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and the former boss of Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels — and the two became friends. Rowan wrote her a letter of recommendation for future jobs, though McGuire said that her low self-esteem at the time prevented her from auditioning for SNL, then in its infancy.

Forty-six years later, at 69 years old, McGuire is campaigning for her audition for SNL’s golden anniversary.

“He wrote me that recommendation, and then he sent a little letter along with it, just a short note, and it said ‘Elly, always remember, better to have tried and failed than never have tried at all,’” McGuire said. “And so, here I am.”

McGuire has lived in many different places and currently splits her time between the house in Warwick where she grew up and an apartment in New York City. She’s worked in the entertainment field, in advertising for WPRO, and for the NBA and NHL.

Currently, she hosts the podcast “Shaking the Bushes,” which focuses on her time living in Rhode Island and NYC and the experiences she’s had in both, and is writing a book of the same name.

Earlier this year, she rediscovered Rowan’s recommendation letter while cleaning. That discovery — along with her being upset at the negativity around aging with the presidential race at the time being between candidates who were 81 and 78 years old — led to her decision to begin her own campaign.

“I run three miles a day, I just went to my friend’s wedding and danced the whole night, I don’t think I stopped once,” McGuire said. “I’m really against stereotypes. I’m a proud Baby Boomer.”

Trying out to become SNL’s oldest cast member, McGuire said, is as much about wanting to change the perception of older people on the show as it is about looking for her second chance.

“They have all young people, but if they want [to play] an old person, they throw a gray wig on, and they have them pushing a walker, and that’s their jokes,” McGuire said.

McGuire said if she gets on the show, she has a few ideas for characters she could portray, such as a cranky old lady working off of Colin Jost and Michael Che’s Weekend Update anchormen. 

She has some big names in her corner besides Rowan, who died in 1987. Her New York apartment is near Michaels’, and she’s become friends with his doorman. SNL alum and “Parks and Rec” star Amy Poehler, she said, also liked one of her audition videos on TikTok. 

So far, McGuire has released three separate videos auditioning for the show. One involves her jogging down Narragansett Parkway, showing Michaels that she’s still in good shape as cars drive by her. Another is her in a pool, holding up her recommendation letter from Rowan — though it is the original letter, it’s encased in a Ziploc bag so as not to damage it. And the most recent release is a faithful recreation of Michaels’ video asking the Beatles to reunite on SNL by presenting Michaels with a check for $5.85.

Currently in the planning phase, she said, is a video focusing on her taking on a nest of wasps that she recently stumbled upon.

“When I run, I come up with so many ideas that I exhaust everybody, because I never stop creating,” McGuire said. “I’m already thinking about the next one and about my podcast.”

McGuire and Ron Trotta, her “forever fiancé” of 33 years, joke that they haven’t officially tied the knot because they’re scared of commitment.

Trotta said that for him, Elly’s audition for SNL was not a surprise.

“She never rests,” Trotta said. “She’s always working on projects that most people wouldn’t work on — she’s very creative.”

Trotta and McGuire have done shows together in the past, where he plays the piano as she improvises songs, mainly about their dog, Schmitty the Weather Dog, who she wrote a book about. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the two traveled to different schools to perform — a group that McGuire called her “toughest audience.”

“That was a huge undertaking for years — we toured the country, went to 350 schools for little kids teaching them about why weather is science,” Trotta said. “She was the impetus and the entertainment and the comedy and everything in that show.”

Finding humor in everyday situations, McGuire said, is important to her. It’s also something that Rowan pointed out as one of her greatest strengths in his recommendation letter from 1978. 

“Elly is that rare person who seems to always find humor in every situation,” the letter reads. “And she has an even rarer ability to remain cheerful, happy, and helpful under trying conditions. She is definitely what we call an upper… Seldom have I, in a lifetime spent in show business, met anyone better suited for the medium than Elly.”

Though McGuire’s campaign is primarily aimed at Michaels, it’s finding a local audience as well. One person, she said, even approached Trotta at the grocery store asking about “Shaking the Bushes.”

“People are actually investing in it,” McGuire said. “I’ve got more people going ‘Hey, have you heard from Lorne yet?’”

For McGuire, having that community support is deeply meaningful to her. The Warwick community, she said, holds a special place in her heart.

“These are my roots,” McGuire said. “This is where I was raised since I was 4 years old. I know everybody in the neighborhood. I know all the history of all the houses.”

There’s not much time left for an audition. Season 50 of SNL officially premieres on Sept. 28, meaning that Elly likely will not be making her NBC late-night debut this year.

If she doesn’t get the audition she’s looking for now, though, Elly isn’t giving up.

“It’s all about having a purpose, and I’m focused, and maybe I can make a change,” McGuire said. “Maybe through my humor, I can make a statement about aging.”

Whether it’s for season 50, 51, 52 or beyond, she believes that her determination, persistence, talent and a little bit of luck — what she considers the four most important factors in this endeavor — will get her the audition with Michaels that she’s looking for.

In doing so, she’d be honoring the memory of an old friend that she and Michaels have in common.

“If I fail, I’ll have at least tried and failed, like Dan Rowan said,” McGuire said. “Put me in, coach. Give me an audition.”