At 95, Mother of Harney & Sons and Real Estate Icon Receives Doctorate

Pictured: Elyse Deublein Harney (center) receives her doctorate from St.Joseph's in May.

Elyse Deublein Harney, the matriarch of two of the region’s most enduring family businesses, received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from St. Joseph's University, New York, last month and delivered the commencement address to its graduating class. She earned her BA in English at the school in 1952. She is 95. 

The university's citation noted her roles as co-owner of Harney & Sons Fine Teas, founder of Elyse Harney Real Estate, member of the Salisbury Board of Selectmen, co-founder of the Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance Service, and the first woman to serve as a eucharistic minister at her parish. Two of her sons, Mike and Paul Harney, run the tea company now. Her daughter Elyse Harney Morris runs the real estate firm, a granddaughter is entering the business and a grandson just got his real estate license. 

Thanks but No Thanks, Well, Okay 

She initially turned the university down. "I actually said, ‘No, no, no, no. Why do I deserve to be a doctor of whatever?’" It was the university president's wife who persuaded her, making the case that Harney was well-placed to speak to the many first-generation graduates and commuters in the audience. She had been both herself—riding the bus daily from New Jersey to Brooklyn rather than burden her widowed mother with the cost of room and board, waitressing at a Vermont inn in the summer to cover tuition ($300 a year in the 1950s). 

When she stood at the podium at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale in May, she covered a lot of ground in a speech that was short and sweet. She discussed her journey but also AI and its risks, Jennifer Doudna's work in gene editing, the new Pope's encyclical on technology and human agency, and closed with a directive. "Open your eyes and see the world," she told the graduates.

A New Life at 50

Harney & Sons began in 1983, when Deublein Harney’s husband, John Harney—who had been obsessing over tea for years, alongside politics and one other thing that Deublein Harney couldn’t quite recall—went into business with a friend out of the White Hart Inn, which the couple managed together in Salisbury, Connecticut. 

Deublein Harney was enthusiastic about her husband’s new project but, at 50, when the inn was sold and John moved fully into tea, she wanted to make her own way. A friend in the real estate business had suggested she get her license. When a building across from the White Hart came on the market—a former bookstore—the Harney’s bought it as their new home. "And then it was just a question from a friend: 'Oh, are you going to open your own office?' 'Yeah, I guess I am.'" she recalls.

Deublein Harney says a background in hospitality has served her and her family well over their many careers. Her daughter and son-in-law are Cornell hotel school graduates. Several of her early hires at the real estate agency came from inn management too. "In the service business you want to give people a good meal, you want to have them comfortable in a room. I always used to say to my waitresses at the White Hart: When you go in the dining room, you're on stage. They want to see a nice smile, have a nice pleasant dinner." Real estate asked for the same disposition. "When your background is conditioned for that, going the little extra mile in any job is very easy."

Independence was the other factor. "Working with my husband was definitely not a big feeling of independence for me. So when I had the opportunity, I wanted to do something on my own." 

When Sotheby's later came to her about an acquisition, she declined. Her argument against consolidation was the same as it was with her husband, practical rather than sentimental: "When you're with a bigger company, I think you're involved in a lot of bureaucracy. You lose the ability to just move."

Deublein Harney belongs to a particular cohort of women who built boutique real estate firms in this region during the 1980s (including Carolyn Klemm, Heather Croner, and Helen Z. Bettistoni). "It was a career that a woman could walk into at that time. I think we were all about the same." The firms they built have since become fixtures of the landscape.

The market those firms now operate in is nearly unrecognizable from the one they entered. Harney recorded the first million-dollar sale in Salisbury—at the time, she says, it was "absolutely unbelievable"—and has watched prices reach levels that still catch her off guard. "I can't believe the prices today. I really can't," says Deublein Harney. "I've been here since the late '60s, and I do see a change now in the area. The market is very strong, but nothing's bulletproof."

She adds that she believes her agency’s success is predicated not on chasing sales statistics but putting people in the right homes. "We do talk about this very seriously in the office. You're involved at a very critical part in someone's life. I think you have to take it seriously."

Active and Still Learning at 95

Deublein Harney takes Yale lecture courses over Zoom now, something she says she would never have had time for when she was younger. She has read the new papal encyclical on AI— "the first encyclical I ever really read”—and finds it a useful frame for thinking about what the technology may cost our shared humanity. She credits, in part, her family’s tea for her good health. 

Deublein Harney describes the energy that tends to arrive for women in the second half of life without much sentimentality. "I think for most women, whether they say so or not, the first part of your life is filled with obligations,” she explains. “Once you have those early years behind you, whether it's raising your family or your early career, and you go off to do something else, I think there's an explosion of energy. One feels they have a potential that hasn't been used, and it just bubbles out."

In her commencement address, she told the Class of 2026 she emphasized to the students that they should take risks on their passions, like she did, and her husband did with Harney and Sons. John Harney passed away in 2014 but she views life in the same way they viewed tea: It should make you smile, that it should be an affordable luxury. Deublein Harney finds this a reasonably durable principle. After 94 years she chooses to embrace the things that make her happy. "So, I don't know," she says. "If the whole world goes down the drain, at least we can still have a cup of tea."

Elyse Harney Real Estate maintains offices in Salisbury, CT; Millerton, NY; Norfolk, CT; Falls Village, CT; and the Berkshires. Harney & Sons Fine Teas is headquartered in Millerton, NY.