At 104, Grover Trytten has added an unlikely title to his résumé: influencer. The Georgetown resident stars in a new advertising campaign for Austin-based Tito’s Handmade Vodka.
In one of the ads, which has not yet been released, Trytten is sitting at a table with a box of the vodka.
“Tito’s has a new 100-milliliter bottle so they found some 100-year-old influencers like me,” Trytten says in the ad. “Do you want me to do an unboxing video? It’s just the right amount of alcohol.”
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In an interview at his retirement center, Trytten said he wasn’t even sure he had drunk Tito’s vodka before the commercial was shot. But his girlfriend’s son told him that he had.
“He’s had it in mixed drinks,” said Steve Bartholomew.
Grover Trytten, photographed at his home in Georgetown, appears in a new Tito’s Handmade Vodka commercial.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
From snake harvesting to social media
Another ad, released a few weeks ago, shows Trytten sitting at a table with a bingo card in front of him. He reaches out and touches a small bottle. The ad also features three other Central Texans, all age 100, talking about the vodka and what it’s like to be a centenarian. Tito’s Handmade Vodka designed the campaign as a new approach to influencer marketing, said Taylor Berry, the senior vice president of marketing.
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“Everybody is going after influencers to talk about their products or show them, and we thought what if we flipped influencers on their head and have people 100 years old or older be the spokespeople for this campaign?” he said.
When Tito’s put out a casting call for the ads, Berry said, one thing in particular stood out about Trytten’s past: He had harvested rattlesnakes to help scientists make antivenom. Scientists use small nofnlethal doses of snake venom to make antivenom, which helps save snakebite victims.
Tito’s has a philanthropic program that gave one of its first grants to the Global Snakebite Initiative to provide antivenom in sub-Saharan Africa, Berry said.
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Trytten, a World War II veteran who also taught science and was an engineer for Texas Instruments, made headlines in May after he was flown in the open cockpit of a vintage aircraft to celebrate his military service. He said that in the 1960s he and a friend harvested three bags of snakes from the Arizona desert to send to a scientist working on antivenom in Florida.
“It was his idea,” said Trytten.
Berry said another reason Trytten was appealing for a Tito’s commercial was his sense of humor.
“He is very funny and very straight-talking,” said Berry. “What you hope for is you get off-the-cuff lines that are unexpected and you didn’t write for, and he delivered.”
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Pilot Darryl Fisher greets Grover Trytten, 104, before flying in a restored 1943 Boeing-Stearman biplane with Dream Flights at the Georgetown Municipal Airport on May 6.
Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman
Veteran Grover Trytten, 104, smiles as he prepares to fly in a restored 1943 Boeing-Stearman biplane with Dream Flights at the Georgetown Municipal Airport on May 6.
Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman
Veteran Grover Trytten, 104, flies alongside pilot Darryl Fisher in a restored 1943 Boeing-Stearman biplane with Dream Flights at the Georgetown Municipal Airport in Georgetown, Wednesday, May 6, 2026.
Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman
Still game at 104
Bartholomew said Trytten, whose girlfriend, Barbara Daigle, lives near him at a Georgetown retirement community, is always considerate toward other people.
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“He’s always thinking about someone else and making them happy,” Bartholomew said.
Trytten said the executive director of the retirement community where he lives heard about the casting call for 100-year-olds to appear in the ad and asked him if he wanted to try out. He said he agreed to do it because “it was a chance to have some fun.”
He said he wasn’t nervous during the filming, which went faster than he expected. He learned something, he said. “Unboxing was a new word to me,” Trytten said.
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He will turn 105 on July 17 and said he doesn’t think much about aging. Trytten hasn’t ruled out acting again in another commercial, he said.
“I’m game for it if it comes up again.”