Peggy Coven has had an entrepreneurial spirit from a young age! Her examples while growing up were her father, who owned an antique car business and her mother who painted landscapes and wrote short stories for publication in magazines while raising ten children! Peggy was the third oldest child and loved being “mom” to all of the younger siblings. It was also her mother who encouraged her artist talent at a young age.

After high school, she moved to Tavares, Florida to live with her grandparents who had retired to a retirement community in Tavares in 1964 from Iowa. Here she trained to be a legal secretary and worked for several types of lawyers around Lake County as well as for the Fifth Judicial Circuit Court Judge. This career ended when she started raising her own family. Her husband, Michael Coven, was the third generation to run Coven Construction in Tavares. His grandfather had moved to Tavares in 1912 and started the company which was taken over by Babe Coven and Michael Coven until Mike’s retirement in 2012.

Peggy is a Professional Portrait Artist who helped to start The Mount Dora Art Festival and over the years has been a member of the Eustis Art League and the Lake County Pastel Society of which she is a past president. It was an honor to be chosen to paint the official portrait of Gary Morse in 2019. She has portraits hanging across the United States and Canada. Her clients include politicians, heads of Ministries, Miss Florida Pageant winners and lots and lots of children! She is a children’s book illustrator as well as a published author. She is a member of the Pastel Society of America and the Florida Portrait Society.

Peggy and her husband, Mike, have four grown children and seven grandchildren. She homeschooled her four children for twenty-two years and passed on her entrepreneurial spirit by starting an Antique Rose Business with her children as an economics class project. It started with four roses in the backyard and became a very successful retail, wholesale and mail order business. They raised 158 varieties and gave talks around Florida to garden clubs, historical societies and Master Gardener Conventions. They helped establish a Pioneer Garden at the Pioneer Village at the Florida State Fair Grounds in Tampa and helped to restore the antique rose garden at Thomas Edison’s home in Fort Meyers. This business helped put all four children through college. She was founding member of the Historical Rose Society in Winter Park, Florida and a member of the Antique Rose Society of Florida in Lakeland, Florida.

Peggy has been a licensed Real Estate Agent since 2005. Since joining Properties of The Villages, she has ranked as one of the top sales professionals and has earned rings and trips to Mexico and Alaska! In 2020 she was honored by the Villages with having a street named after her: “Coven Court” in the Village of Chitty Chatty! Her clients choose to work with her because of her expertise, experience and her work ethic. She has a vast knowledge of The Villages and a keen appreciation for the building experience. She has empathy for the clients and genuinely wants to help them find the perfect home. She loves giving the lifestyle tour to first time visitors to The Villages® community!

When Peggy is not helping clients with the buying and selling of their homes; she can be found in her art studio painting portraits or curled up reading a biography, a self-improvement book or something pertaining to history!