Fifty-eight years after Noreen Borino wore the crown as Evanston Cowboy Days Queen, the family isn't finished collecting them.
Her daughter, Lisa Borino, followed her into the arena 26 years later, winning the same title in 1994.
That made them only the second mother-daughter pair in the long history of Evanston Cowboy Days to both become queen.
Now they're going for the "triple crown," Borino says.
Lisa's 11-year-old daughter, Carriellen Mower, has decided she'd like to become a rodeo queen herself, and what began as a little girl's ambition has already become something of a family project.
They're looking for horses. They're figuring out where to board them.
They’re making plans for Carriellen to spend time riding and pushing cattle with the Proffit family.
The goal is years away, but Lisa knows exactly how much work stands between an 11-year-old girl and a Cowboy Days crown.
"There's no better way than to just jump on one and let's go ride for the summer," she said.
Red Roan
Noreen, then Noreen Wall, became Evanston Cowboy Days Queen in 1968, but she didn't exactly ride into the competition on the kind of horse expected to win it.
“There were lots of girls trying out with these high-powered registered Arabians and quarter horses,” Noreen said. “We were kind of poor.”
What Noreen had were brothers who chased wild horses — and “I thought, ‘Wow, there’s one little red roan. I think I can beat those girls,’” she said.
So she rode him relentlessly.
By the time the queen competition arrived, the wild mustang and the underdog riding him had become legitimate contenders. There was just one quirk to their partnership: The horse behaved better when Noreen sang to him.
During the competition, she quietly started singing his favorite song as they passed the judges, "just kind of low because I didn’t want anybody to hear me,” she said.
When the judges later asked if she'd been singing to her horse, Noreen said, "Yes, he’s a wild horse, and I kind of have to sing him his favorite song so he’ll calm down,” she recalled. “They were just so impressed with it.”
Twenty-six years later, Noreen and her daughter became only the second mother-daughter combination in Cowboy Days history when Lisa won in 1994.
Their names remain on the long list of women who have represented one of Wyoming's enduring Labor Day traditions, which marked its 90th year in 2026.
Noreen had admired the Painter/Fern family, the first mother-daughter Cowboy Days queen team, and remembered that family's hope of eventually adding another generation to its lineage.
They never got there.
Now Noreen has four granddaughters.
And one of them, at least, is interested.
Lisa Borino wears the distinctive crown-topped cowboy hat of Evanston Cowboy Days royalty. Borino became the 1994 Cowboy Days Queen. Now her 11-year-old daughter hopes to someday make the family three generations of Cowboy Days queens. 
Lisa Borino rides during a parade as part of her years representing Evanston Cowboy Days rodeo royalty. She became Cowboy Days Queen in 1994, 26 years after her mother.
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Lisa didn't simply appear one year, put on a sash and walk away with the Cowboy Days crown.
Lisa was the first Cowboy Days Junior Princess when that title was introduced, then worked her way through the ranks. When she became old enough to compete for queen, she first served as an attendant before winning the title the following year.
She was a high school senior when she became the 1994 Evanston Cowboy Days Queen.
"It was so much fun," Lisa said. "We got to go around to like Days of '47 and all the fairs, and it was just such an amazing experience as a little girl growing up."
But beneath the crowns and rodeo appearances was work, and a lot of it.
Competitors had to know horses, the parts of a horse, saddles and tack. There was riding and horsemanship, current events to study and the possibility of impromptu questions.
Lisa said what she carried from the experience into adulthood wasn't pageantry — it was dedication.
"If you're gonna dedicate yourself to something, you go all in," she said. "You do it your best, and no matter what the outcome, you make sure that you do a good enough job to make yourself proud."
That's a lesson that traveled a long way from the Cowboy Days arena.
She later became a journeyman and MSHA-certified electrician, working across the country from Florida to Oregon.
She still gives essentially the same advice to her children.
"Do it to where you're proud of your work, no matter what," she said. "As long as you can make yourself proud, nothing else matters."
Carriellen Mower wears her crown and sash at the rodeo grounds, continuing a family connection to horses. 
Carriellen Mower, right, poses with another young rider and their horse.
Enter Carriellen
Now the lesson is being passed down again.
Carriellen has already gotten a taste of pageantry. She's the 2025-26 Mini Miss Beauty of America, Lisa said.
And apparently, she decided this beauty-pageant business wasn't terribly difficult.
"Well, this is easy," Lisa remembers her daughter saying.
Mom had news for her.
Rodeo queening is different.
"I told her, 'You have to not only learn how to present yourself as a beauty queen, you have to represent yourself as a beauty queen on a horse,'" Lisa said.
That horse changes everything.
"It's not just being a beauty queen as you're walking and talking, it's your poise on a horse also," she said. "Which is a totally different level of beauty queen."
There is reining to learn. Riding. Horsemanship. Knowledge of the animal beneath you and the equipment on it.
"You've got the whole horsemanship, your horse, your saddle, your tack," Lisa said. "You got to do all this other stuff yourself. It's not just sitting around being pretty."
The family has been looking into horses and boarding options, and Lisa plans to get Carriellen out with the Proffit family to spend time horseback and moving cattle.
Lisa figures that ought to knock the "city slicker" out of her daughter.
By the time Carriellen is old enough to pursue rodeo royalty, Lisa hopes the riding, reining and everything else won't be foreign territory.
"We're just starting one step at a time," she said.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
