Real estate icon Ebby Halliday dies at age 104

DALLAS - Dallas real estate legend Ebby Halliday has died at the age of 104.

According to Ebby Halliday Realtors, she passed away Tuesday evening from natural causes.

Halliday founded the Dallas-based company in 1945. It is now the largest independently owned real estate company in Texas and ranks 10th in the country.

"While we grieve the loss of Ebby, our legendary founder, friend and mentor, we celebrate a long life well lived," sadi Mary Frances Burleson, Ebby Halliday Companies CEO. "Each of us who had the good fortune of knowing Ebby has been touched by the grace, fortitude and compassion with which she lived her life. Ebby had a very simple saying that she lived by, 'Do something for someone every day.' That small bit of wisdom served Ebby very, very well."

Halliday was born in 1911 in the small town of Leslie, Ark. She started her first job at the age of 8 and quickly learned the value of repeat business and the importance of attention to customers, her company's website states.

During the Great Depression, she moved her family to Dallas. She worked as a hat department manager at the W.A. Green Store and later opened her own hat boutique.

She got her start in real estate after meeting Dallas Cowboys founder Clint Murchison. He was trying to sell 50 single-family homes made of insulated concrete and told her, "If you can sell those crazy hats to my wife, maybe you can sell my crazy houses."

Throughout the years Halliday became know for helping women in the workforce. She opened several women's centers and has contributed to numerous local organizations through community service and philanthropy.

Halliday married former FBI agent and lawyer Maurice Acers in 1965. The couple didn't have any children before Acers died in 1993.