Long before Coco and Izzy Tihanyi opened Surf Diva, their father, a Hungarian-born engineer and former competitive swimmer and water polo player, handed his daughters their first surfboards and encouraged them to be confident.
“Our dad taught us to be athletes and both parents taught us to be persistent and passionate about what you’re doing,” Coco said.
Their mother influenced them just as much, though in a different way.
“Our mom taught us to be divas,” Izzy said, describing a childhood filled with ballet, piano, violin, opera and French fashion, alongside camping trips where their mother educated them about nature and sustainability, “before it was a thing.”
Thirty years later, that mix of grit and glamour remains the identity behind Surf Diva, which the sisters describe as the world’s first female-focused surf school, located in a storefront on Avenida de la Playa in La Jolla Shores. The milestone, the sisters said, has arrived faster than they expected.
“I feel like these 30 years flew by,” Coco said. “Time goes by so quickly when you love what you do. It’s like being on vacation every day.”
The Tihanyi sisters are lifelong La Jollans. Their family moved to the seaside neighborhood from Los Angeles when the twins were 8, and they went on to attend La Jolla’s public schools, as well as a third sister, who attended UC San Diego.
When the sisters launched Surf Diva in 1996, some in the surf industry questioned whether women needed lessons designed specifically for them, but the Tihanyis couldn’t ignore the gap others had missed.
“We saw adult women who wanted to learn and no programs,” Izzy said, noting that most instruction at the time was “geared towards kids or towards guys.”
“Women learn differently,” Izzy said.
That philosophy shaped a teaching style the sisters describe as more holistic than a typical lesson built around simply standing up on a board.
“It’s about the ocean, the tides, the currents, the wind, the waves, the etiquette,” Izzy said. “We have a large number of students who want to learn the actual sport and spirit of surfing, including who has the right of way and what beaches not to surf when you’re a beginner.”
One innovation from Surf Diva’s earliest days has since spread across the sport worldwide: color-coded rash guards.
“I call it the story of the red rash guard. We were the first organized school that used rash guards for our instructors, putting them in red because it’s easily recognizable,” Izzy said, adding that students were also grouped by color so instructors could keep tabs on smaller groups.
“That’s been adopted throughout the world,” Izzy said. “When you go to Australia now or Costa Rica or France, the schools have taken up rash guards for teaching. And that was started in 1996 in La Jolla.”
Surf Diva has trained more than 1,000 surf instructors over three decades, many of whom have gone on to open women’s surf programs in Mexico, Costa Rica, Australia and Canada.
Despite outside offers to expand to locations such as Santa Monica, the sisters said they’ve chosen to keep Surf Diva rooted in La Jolla.
“We love La Jolla, and we love San Diego,” Coco said. “Izzy and I are so grateful to have surrounded ourselves with people who care.”
The business has become a family affair. Both sisters said they now employ their children at the shop and school alongside the kids of longtime friends and colleagues.
“This morning I had a full circle moment where I saw Diego, Coco’s son, at the beach and he’s a camp director, and he took my daughter surfing. She’s a camp counselor and loving it,” Izzy said. “It just made my heart sing.”
Looking ahead, the sisters said they hope Surf Diva’s legacy is less about the business itself than the example it sets.
“The fact that we were able to start a business and do it together,” Coco said, “one of our favorite mottos is ‘what we do together, we do better,’ and we tell our staff that too.”
Part of that ethos, the sisters said, traces back to another guiding motto they return to again and again.
“The best surfer in the water is the one having the most fun,” Coco said, “and that’s what we try to do with everything.”
For more about Surf Diva, visit surfdiva.com.
