It’s been more than two decades since Mary Jo Buttafuoco took a bullet to the face from Amy Fisher and lost her ability to smile.

Now, thanks to a stunning new surgery, she’s grinning from ear to ear.

“It’s the first time in 25 years that when I smile, I can see the side of my teeth,” Buttafuoco told Inside Edition following her revolutionary facial nerve surgery.

“I love it!”

The 62-year-old made headlines in 1992 when she was shot in the face by Fisher — the infamous “Long Island Lolita” who was secretly sleeping with her then-husband, Joey Buttafuoco.

What wasn’t reported, though, was Mary Jo’s struggles with self-esteem and her beauty as a result of her injuries.

“I was out in public with a very paralyzed, deformed face,” she explained. “It affects your self-esteem. It does, when you can’t put on a bright smile.”

Buttafuoco would later divorce her husband in 2003 and describe how she came to terms with their wild and tumultuous relationship in a 2010 book, titled: “Getting It Through My Thick Skull: Why I Stayed, What I Learned, and What Millions of People Involved with Sociopaths Need to Know.”

While she was comfortable on the inside, though, the Long Islander had an even tougher time coming to grips with her appearance.
“She doesn’t think of herself as pretty [or] beautiful and it’s completely the opposite,” Buttafuoco’s daughter, Jessie, told Inside Edition.

“She is the most beautiful person I know inside and out.”

After years of being afraid to look in the mirror, Buttafuoco met with Dr. Babak Azizzadeh — a surgeon who has developed a new surgery procedure to fix the nerves in one’s face — and finally chose to do something about it.

Using a nerve stimulator, Dr. Azizzadeh was able to identify and tag which microscopic nerves were working and which were misfiring.

“There are certain muscles that are obstructing her from smiling so we are going to rewire her nerves,” he said before one of the procedures. “Believe it or not, some of the nerves are actually causing her smile to get worse.”

In addition to rewiring her nerves, Dr. Azzizadeh said he also gave Buttafuoco a facelift to even out how she’s been aging.