Man, 70, Gets Facelift After Retiring to Bring ‘Magic’ into His Life. See the Before-and-After Photos (Exclusive)

Gary’s entering a new phase of his life with a whole new look.

The 70-year-old retiree, who lives in Kansas, knew that when he officially wrapped up his working life, he wanted a fresh start with his appearance after being dissatisfied with the way he’d aged. In short, he wanted to look in the mirror and love what he saw.

“I was just looking for a little magic in my life and trying to not go into this period of my life kind of dreading it,” Gary tells PEOPLE. “It was like, ‘Oh God, I look so old.’ So I thought if I could turn that around, it would be just a more exciting time for me.”

Gary spent upwards of a year researching who would be the right plastic surgeon to help him turn his looks around. He scoured the internet, read patients’ reviews and finally landed on Dr. Mike Nayak of Nayak Plastic Surgery. Gary says the St. Louis, Mo.-based doctor “checked every box” on his list of wants and needs.

“Everything they said that was good for a plastic surgeon to do, he was right there,” Gary says of Dr. Nayak.

After a year on Dr. Nayak’s waiting list, Gary was ready for his surgery in March. He tells PEOPLE that when he went into his consultation, he had an idea of what he wanted, but he worked with the doctor to make sure their visions were aligned. In the end, Gary got a deep plane facelift, deep necklift, brow lift, lower blepharoplasty with fat transposition and a rhinoplasty.

Dr. Nayak tells PEOPLE that Gary’s main focus was his neck, but it’s rare to only get a neck lift done because all of the skin on the face and head is connected, which means you generally address everything at once.

“The neck flows into the lower face, flows into the brow, so we did all that,” Dr. Nayak says, adding that he didn’t do any laser resurfacing (a common finishing touch to even skin tone and further rejuvenate the skin), because Gary wasn’t interested. Instead, his skin kept that natural look for his age.

“There’s a particular age spot, you can see it traveled three inches,” Dr. Nayak says of Gary’s face. “You can use it almost like a marker and see how far things moved on him because he did not get laser resurfaced.”

Gary’s nose was a topic of discussion between him and the doctor — and became a huge sticking point with social media commenters as well. Dr. Nayak shares that Gary told him he’d lived with his nose for 70 years and that was “enough,” he wanted to fix it. The plastic surgeon, however, didn’t want to change it too much.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

“His nose is bigger, and I kept it that way. He would not have been the guy to go swing for the fences and turn out this little tiny nose on a 70-year-old guy that’s 6 feet tall, it wouldn’t fit,” Dr. Nayak says. But plenty of commenters on Gary’s social media posts on Dr. Nayak’s page noted that his nose was still big. Both men have defended the result.

“It’s not droopy and hooky anymore, and I can say that because I have a droopy hooky nose,” Dr. Nayak tells PEOPLE. “It’s a proud, masculine, appropriate nose on his frame.”

After his five procedures with Dr. Nayak, Gary says his recovery was quite easy. He experienced no complications and was able to return home as planned after the requisite 10 days in St. Louis. He admits he looked a “little beat up” immediately post-op, but he healed right on schedule.

Generally, an intensive plastic surgery like this takes a couple months to heal, though Dr. Nayak has told PEOPLE that everyone is a bit different, and some people will bounce back quicker than others. For Gary, he was leaving the house after a month, though he says he was still a bit swollen.

“Two months later, no one could really tell much. I still had a lot of swelling, most of mine was really in my upper face and around my eyes. Then just gradually over the months, it would go away,” he says after about five months post-op. “I’m still healing, so I’m really happy with the way it looks, but I think it continues to improve for probably a year.”

After years of sitting on virtual meetings and not liking the way his face looked, Gary says he no longer dreads something like the Zoom call he had with PEOPLE. He even jokes that several women were commenting on Dr. Nayak’s posts about him, which he was very flattered by.

“I liked some of the women’s comments about how I look, and I was like, ‘Whoa, really? Thank you,'” he says with a bit of a blush. Dr. Nayak adds that as soon as he started sharing Gary’s story on his social media, the comments went crazy with people saying how great he looked.

For Gary, though, it all comes back to his renewed sense of confidence. And as for that magic he was looking for?

He says, “I absolutely found the magic.”