The start of Tina Loyd’s story sounds awfully familiar. A small-town girl who grew up on a small beef farm in a small Missouri town — population less than 1,000 — pays for college by waitressing and modeling. Loyd, who studied communications with a minor in theater at Missouri State University, modeled in her post-undergrad life along with other jobs to make ends meet and pay for graduate school. She had thought she wanted to be an attorney.

Photography by Gabriel Cano

“I was paying my way through school, working 40 hours a week and going to school full time was really, really hard. I needed money, quite frankly. And so I basically started working at that point, and just kind of led from one opportunity to the next,” she says. “I was kind of at a loss on what to do at that point, because I hadn’t really found anything that I truly enjoyed, but I found Precious Formals.”

And that’s where the familiarity ends.

At a model fitting at Precious Formals when she was 25 years old, the showroom was packed and busy. Loyd started selling dresses to vendors. And then, next thing she knew, she was traveling to New York, Chicago, Atlanta and across California.

She met Terry Costa, whose eponymous store, founded in 1986, is a destination for occasion attire, when she was busy catching flights and selling formal dresses on the wholesale side.

“It’s sort of strange,” Loyd says. “I remember the first time that I met her, she was asking me questions about a dress, and then we just kind of hit it off from there.”

In the 2000s, it came to a point where Loyd was trying to decide if she wanted to head to Los Angeles to try her hand in the entertainment industry (the minor in theater) or if she wanted to come to Dallas and join Costa.

“A neat thing about Terry Costa is that it incorporates a little bit of everything that I’ve ever done in my life,” she says. “Even when I was a little kid, my mom decorated wedding cakes on the side and I would go and be the little girl, and I’d line up all the little forks and help her set up for the wedding.”

Loyd competed in pageants for seven years, mostly in Miss America, placing third in the state. And so for seven years she worked alongside Costa, selling bridal and pageant dresses along with homecoming and prom dresses.

But Terry asked Tina to join her in Dallas for a reason.

“Terry, who was one of my favorite clients, and she said, ‘You know, have you ever thought about owning your own business?’” Loyd says.

By 2007, Loyd bought out Costa and became the sole owner. The team has stayed the same for the most part over the years. Costa stuck around for a bit as a mentor.

“Terry taught me a lot; she taught me a lot about life,” she says. “She’d taught me about having the courage to keep moving forward. The business has been through a lot. Obviously, everyone has had a pandemic; we had a fire at one point, my house had been hit by a tornado, so I would say that we’re very resilient.”

Terry Costa, whose primary clients are from outside the city, turns over its inventory at least five times a year, approximately 10,000 dresses. Seventy percent of the business is prom and homecoming, 13% of it is bridal, depending on the day, 12% in the evening wear category, and then the rest is accessories and couture.

The most popular designer in the prom category is Sherri Hill, along with Portia and Scarlett, and Ashley Lauren. Loyd just launched their in-house Terry Costa Exclusive Collection. The North Dallas store, which already has a significant footprint, expanded (in the space where the restaurant fire occurred), allowing for a larger bridal section.

The offices are simple. Where the administrative team sits is an elevated alcove tucked in behind dresses. Loyd sits in a corner, where she uses a fold-up table as her desk. She still spends a lot of her time on the floor.

“I enjoy watching the client when they come alive, especially with the prom and homecoming,” she says. “The young girls, when they get dressed up, and they just look so beautiful, and you see the look on their mom. Their mom didn’t even realize they grew up that much, and she’s like, ‘Oh, wow, she’s becoming a young lady, you know?’ And you can just see the joy beaming off their faces.”

CORRECTION: This story has been amended from its print version which incorrectly identified Tina Loyd as Tina Lloyd.