In the 1970s, she made history while running in Boston and New York. She later fought to get a women’s marathon into the Olympics.

Nina Kuscsik, who was the first celebrity of women’s marathoning and used her clout to agitate for the first women's Olympic race at that distance in 1984, died June 8 of respiratory failure at her Huntington Station home after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. She was 86.

Overcoming male resistance as a voice for equality, she was the first woman to enter the New York City Marathon and the first official female winner of the Boston race.