INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — When Katie Stam Irk was named Miss America in 2009, she was the first Miss Indiana to claim the crown. Wearing that for a year took her far away from her family farm in Seymour and brought many changes to her life.

Trite though it may sound, she is the poster child for the old saw: “You can take the woman out of the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the woman.” Her love for agriculture remains strong even though she and her husband and daughter live in the Indianapolis metropolitan area.

After traveling the nation in her role as Miss America, Irk came back to her home state and began working as a representative for Midwest Ag Finance. She serves with the marketing team and speaks at meetings and represents the company at trade shows.

When the new farm bill was accepted, she made the rounds, as host of several information meetings. For the past two years, she has been a licensed Realtor with Keller Williams.

And, she and her husband, Brian, have a daughter, Charlotte. They are expecting their second daughter in about three months. Irk would like to have several more children and stay at home with them: “I like to think of myself now as a stay-at-home mom who works.”

Her parents still operate the farm where she was raised. She said they still have a small Holstein herd. She likes to get down to the farm as often as possible; she is the youngest, with two sisters and a brother. None of them have stayed on the farm, and they all live around the Indianapolis area.

Growing up on a dairy farm instilled a sense of hard work and responsibility in her that helped her cope with the constant rush that surrounds being Miss America. “On a farm, you don’t get to take days off,” she said. Neither, she learned, does Miss America.

She visited troops at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio and in Germany near Heidelberg. Also, she served as the National Goodwill Ambassador for the Children’s Miracle Network, raising funds and promoting the organization through dozens of speaking tours. She fielded a national tour working with nonprofit organizations, as well, encouraging people to volunteer in their communities.

Irk said she felt like the public readily identified with her because she came from humble roots. “I’ve had to work for everything I’ve had in life. That was received well (in my role) as Miss America,” she said.

Nothing she does now is connected with the Miss America organization, but she still is active in her community, particularly with Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis and the Lutheran Church. She supports the military with visits as she can, too.

To get to the Miss America pageant, Irk (then Stam) entered the 2007 Miss Duneland contest in northwestern Indiana. Her husband-to-be is from La Porte and she had spent time there with him and his family. “I felt like I could represent that area well,” she said. From there she was crowned Miss Indiana and served in that capacity for several months before leaving for Atlantic City and the Miss America pageant.

“There was about a year-and-a-half span,” she explained, so there was time to serve each area before she moved to the next level. “It was important to savor, to serve, that title and not have to focus immediately on the next.”

A graduate of the University of Indianapolis, Irk holds a degree in communications, with an emphasis on broadcasting. “I’ve always wanted to be on the air,” she said.

Someday, she’d like to get back to farming, too. It would be a great place to raise her growing family, she said.