To her friends in Maine, Phyllis Wyeth of Tenants Harbor is the gracious but determined lady who overcame tragedy and happened to marry into America’s beloved family of artists.

To the rest of the world, she is the owner of Union Rags, a favorite to win Saturday’s Kentucky Derby. When the television cameras find her afterward, her tears may be evident. Hers is the age-old story of separation and reunion with a twist. She sold Union Rags as a yearling on the advice of her accountant and immediately had regrets.

She bought him back a year later, paying nearly three times his original selling price. Her reason was personal. Union Rags’ bloodlines go back to Glad Rags, raced by her parents in the 1960s.

For Phyllis Wyeth, this is a love story first. Business? Maybe a distant second.

“It’s a true story,” she said, responding to an email to Point Lookout Farm in Chadds Ford, Pa., where she and her husband, Jamie, spend much of their time when not in Maine. “I had a dream.”

Not that she shared that dream with everyone. Wyeth is a down-to-earth but private, 71-year-old woman. Her dream has taken form in the run-up to the Kentucky Derby which continues today with the draw for positions in the starting gate.

“All the horses and their owners have stories and they’re going to be told,” said Christopher Brownawell, director of the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, where works by Jamie Wyeth, his father Andrew and grandfather N.C. Wyeth are displayed.

“Before that gate opens people will hear her story. She’s going to have a lot more fans. It’s time for her to get that recognition. It’s typical of Phyllis to be very understated.”

As a young woman she rode horses in steeplechase racing, jumping fences and ditches. That ended in 1962 when an impatient driver pulled out to pass a truck and hit the car Wyeth was driving in the opposite direction. The head-on collision broke her neck and ended her riding career. She was paralyzed from the waist down at age 21. Over the decades she’s had more surgeries to stablize her spine.

She turned to the sport of carriage driving. She turned to her farm, which straddles the border between Pennsylvania and Delaware. By all definitions, her Chadds Ford Stable is a small breeding operation. That was one reason her accountant urged her to sell Union Rags. She needed sales to qualify as a business.

She has never had a horse in the Kentucky Derby. Union Rags’ victory at Saratoga last August was her first win in a graded stakes race. She is 71 years old but she could still dream.

Story or dream, Union Rags’ success as a 2-year-old is news to some of her friends and many Mainers. “We’re long-time friends but I’m pretty clueless on the horse-racing end of things,” said Peter Ralston, a co-founder of the Island Institute in Rockland, which promotes awareness Maine’s coast and islands. “I don’t know beans about Union Rags but certainly I want to see Phyllis win.”

So does Peggi Loveless, a librarian at the Katz Library at the University of Maine-Augusta who will host a small Kentucky Derby party at her Augusta-area home. She got caught up in the twin stories of Phyllis Wyeth and Union Rags.

“I’m incredibly excited about this. If the word got out and more Mainers understood that Union Rags is owned by Phyllis Wyeth there would be even more attention.”

In the next breath, Loveless says she understands. The Red Sox are playing and the Celtics are in the playoffs. The NHL playoffs have been exciting. Squeeze in the Kentucky Derby? Well, it is the most exciting two minutes in sports.

Mainers haven’t had a real rooting interest in the Kentucky Derby in 65 years, since Jet Pilot won the race in 1947. The colt was owned by Elizabeth Arden of ladies cosmetics fame. She had a home and spa in the Kennebec County town of Mount Vernon and named her racing stable Maine Chance Farm.

There was a lot of emotion at Churchill Downs the day Jet Pilot won. A barn fire at a Chicago race track destroyed 22 Maine Chance Farm horses the year before. Jet Pilot was on the road to another track when the fire started.

Phyllis Wyeth is aware of the increasing attention in Maine. “There seems to be more excitement in Tenants Harbor about this race than in Louisville (where Churchill Downs is located.) As Jamie and I divide our time between Maine and Pennsylvania, I like to think our Chadds Ford Stable as being partly a Maine farm.

“I’m thankful and overwhelmed.”