Val was born one of 12 children of Frances and John Zemanek. In 1895, the Zemaneks arrived in Galveston from Moravia, now part of the Czech Republic, said Chernosky's daughter and caregiver, Adelma Graham. In 1905 the family moved from Brookshire to a farm near Guy in southern Fort Bend County. "I was 6 years old," Chernosky said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle in 2003. "We traveled in a covered wagon, my family, two dogs and our cotton seed. I saw a train for the first time. We stopped our wagon at the tracks." As a child, Val plowed fields, and planted corn and cotton. On the farm were cows, hogs, chickens, turkeys and a vegetable garden. The family's few food purchases were for lard, flour and salt, she said. "She didn't speak English until she was 12, when she started school," Graham said. In 1920, Val enrolled at the College of Industrial Arts, now Texas Woman's University, in Denton. She took a course in business, learning typing and other office duties. After a year at the college, Val took a secretarial job in Rosenberg in the office of lawyer C.H. Chernosky. There she met his brother, Frank E. Chernosky. They were married in 1921. The Chernoskys lived near her parents until 1928, when they moved to Newgulf in Wharton County and in 1936 to Corpus Christi, where Val worked as a bookkeeper. They divorced in 1948. After retiring in 1966, Val Chernosky moved to Houston and did sewing and alterations, Graham said. In recent years, Chernosky and Graham took part in the New England Centenarian Study at Boston Medical Center, which concluded that longevity is primarily a function of genes. Until 2005 Chernosky lived in her Sharpstown apartment with help from Graham. A dedicated reader, Chernosky said in the Chronicle interview that she had read more than 400 books since 1999. "She wasn't a real social person," her daughter said. "Her family was always her central focus." Her sons, Frank E. Chernosky Jr. and Alvis B. Chernosky, are deceased. In addition to her daughter, survivors include a brother, John Zemanek, 86; sisters Lee Lenert, 97, and Olga Seale, 98, both of Houston; two grandsons, Alvis Chernosky of Katy and Eugene Chernosky of Ingleside; and a daughter-in-law, Virginia Chernosky of Rockport.