Anna, a senior citizen with decades of office manager experience, is forced to retire from her position with a magazine by an inexperienced relative of the former editor. Resentful and determined, she decides to start her own magazine and recruits writers, editors and illustrators, the funny old people' of the title. She develops a business plan, buys equipment, leases a cottage to serve as an office, and the magazine slowly evolves.
She stays in touch with her hospitalized former boss and friend, and through him becomes embroiled in his peculiar domestic difficulties. Paula, wife of Bernard, the former editor, has been duped into flying to Europe to untangle a scheme concocted by her former husband.
While visiting Bernard at a rehabilitation facility, Anna re-connects with a fiancée from thirty years earlier, a man she hoped was out of her life forever.
With hard work and the good fellowship of the funny old people, the magazine thrives. Much of it takes the form of short, humorous essays, some written by the funny old people, and some received as online submissions.