Since Evelyn Kozak was born on the Lower East Side on Aug. 14, 1899, she has outlived two husbands and survived the Spanish flu and two strokes. She ran a boardinghouse in Miami until she was 90 and avidly played Scrabble until she was 95. In January, she moved in with a granddaughter  and eight great-grandchildren under 13  in the Kensington section of Brooklyn, where she gets manicures, gives precise instructions on how to prepare her breakfast, and recently asked relatives to survey the planet for older eligible bachelors.

“It was like she started to have a brand-new life at 110,” said the granddaughter, Brucha Weisberger, who eagerly took up the matchmaking challenge.

Ms. Kozak turned 111 on Saturday, but she had been admitted to the hospital the day before with an infection. So the birthday party scheduled for Sunday was canceled, though 13 relatives trooped into Maimonides Medical Center with flowers and an ice-cream cake to celebrate instead.

In a recent scandal in Japan, the authorities were unable to find scores of supposed centenarians, often discovering that their descendants had been improperly collecting benefits in their elders’ names. On Sunday, those revelations led to a check on a couple of New York residents who have lived well past 100.