Margie Klorer Payton, 98, of Isabella, Missouri, passed away peacefully on May 31, 2026, at her beloved home on Rainbow Ridge in the Ozarks. She was born July 30, 1927, in St. Louis, Missouri, the only child of Walter Klorer, who traveled the South setting up stores for the Woolworth Corporation, and Clara Klorer, who emigrated from the village of Batina in the Baranja region of Croatia.

Margie graduated from Rosati-Kain High School. She met her husband, Emmit "Skip" Payton, on the dance floor of the Casa Loma Ballroom in 1951, and they married on May 10, 1952. They were together for 65 years. Back in St. Louis the two of them taught swing dancing. Skip was a sales rep for the Schulze and Burch Biscuit Company, and Margie taught continuing-education classes in the Lindbergh School District for about ten years: line dancing, calligraphy, shorthand, macramé, and ceramics, with some painting and sewing along the way.

The Ozarks had Margie and Skip's hearts long before they lived there. Starting in 1978 they drove down from St. Louis to the Theodosia Marina Resort so often, always room 201 and often rolling in at midnight, that the owners finally just told them to keep the key. They bought a little house in the woods behind the marina, and in 1996 they retired for good to Rainbow Ridge, a home set high on a cliff overlooking Bull Shoals Lake. "It's so beautiful," Margie said of the place she loved. "The scenery is just gorgeous." Margie was always creative, forever sewing, gardening, and crafting. She was an artist as well, painting dog portraits, flowers, and landscapes of her beloved Ozarks. She treasured her friends at Theodosia United Methodist Church and the Chickenfoot gals, and took real pride in staying healthy and independent, mowing her own yard well into her nineties. At 91 she put it simply: "I feel like I'm 60."

She was preceded in death by her husband, Skip, in 2017, and is survived by her daughter, Donna Payton, and son-in-law, Howard Rosenstein, of New Jersey; her grandson, Jason Payton Rosenstein, of Brooklyn, New York; her dear friend Judy Schnable; and a wide circle of friends in the Ozarks.

It was Margie's wish that her ashes be scattered at the far end of the view from her sunroom, where the deer and other wildlife she loved to watch so often passed through.

Memorial services will be held at a later date. Arrangements are under the direction of Clinkingbeard Funeral Home, Gainesville, MO.