Martial artist and actor Chuck Norris awarded an 83-year-old Utah grandmother a fifth-degree black belt in karate.

“I was so excited. I was able to bow to him, turn around, he put the black belt on me, I turned back around and bowed, and then he grabbed me and hugged me so hard, he actually pulled me off the ground. My one foot went up,” Carole Taylor said of her interaction with Norris at his annual United Fighting Arts Federation International Training Convention on Saturday in Las Vegas.

Taylor began practicing martial arts 15 years ago when she was 68, after she started taking her 11-year-old granddaughter to lessons.

“I thought wow, this is mental and physical. This would be a good thing for someone my age to do. I asked the teacher if it would be all right if I joined the class, and so that’s why I did it,” she recalled.

She performed in front of dozens of people at the convention Saturday to the Beach Boys’ song “Little Old Lady from Pasadena.” She put on a show by hobbling to the mat, before straightening her back and readying her stance as the crowd and Norris gave her a standing ovation.

“Norris was so kind, and he’s 81, and he made some comments about that he had not been exercising all that much recently and that I had inspired him to go back and to begin to train again, and that made me feel very, very good,” Taylor said.

(Picture courtesy of NBC News)