Garrison Keillor
Birth name	Gary Edward Keillor
Born	(1942-08-07) August 7, 1942 (age 69) Anoka, Minnesota
Medium	Radio, Print
Nationality	American
Years active	1969–present
Genres	Observational comedy, Satire
Subject(s)	American culture (esp. the Midwest); American politics
Spouse	Mary Guntzel (1965–1976) Ulla Skaerved (1985–1990) Jenny Lind Nilsson (1995–present)
Notable works and roles	Himself, Guy Noir, Lefty, Bob Burger, and Lake Wobegon narrator in A Prairie Home Companion

Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor (born August 7, 1942) is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio personality. He is known as host of the Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion (also known as Garrison Keillor's Radio Show on United Kingdom's BBC Radio 4 Extra, as well as on RTÉ in Ireland, Australia's ABC, and Radio New Zealand National in New Zealand).

Personal life[link]

Keillor was born in Anoka, Minnesota, the son of Grace Ruth (née Denham) and John Philip Keillor, who was a carpenter and postal worker.^[1][2] The family belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, an Irish fundamentalist Christian denomination Keillor has since left. He is six feet, three inches (1.9 m) tall^[3] and has Scots ancestry. Keillor is a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.^[4] In 2006 he told Christianity Today that he was attending the Episcopal church in Saint Paul, after previously attending a Lutheran church in New York.^[5][6] He graduated from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in English in 1966. While there, he began his broadcasting career on the student-operated radio station known today as Radio K.

Keillor has been married three times:^[7]

• To Mary Guntzel, from 1965 to 1976. The couple has one son, Jason, born in 1969.
• To Ulla Skaerved (a former exchange student from Denmark at Keillor's high school whom he famously re-encountered at a class reunion), from 1985 to 1990.
• To violinist Jenny Lind Nilsson (b. 1957), who is from his hometown of Anoka, since 1995. They have one daughter, Maia Grace Keillor, born December 29, 1997.^[8]

Between his first and second marriages, he was also romantically involved with Margaret Moos, who worked as a producer of A Prairie Home Companion.^[9]

The Keillors maintain homes on the Upper West Side of New York City and in Saint Paul, Minnesota. One of his brothers, the historian Steven Keillor, is also an author.^[10] In the summer of 2001, Keillor had mitral valve surgery on his heart.

On September 7, 2009, Keillor was briefly hospitalized after suffering a minor stroke.^[11]

Ancestors[link]

In his book Homegrown Democrat (2004), Keillor mentions some of his noteworthy ancestors, including Joseph Crandall,^[12] who was an associate of Roger Williams (who founded the first American Baptist church as well as Rhode Island); and Prudence Crandall, who founded the first African-American women's school in America.^[13]

Career[link]

Keillor in 2010, wearing his signature red shoes

Radio[link]

Garrison Keillor started his professional radio career in November 1969 with Minnesota Educational Radio (MER), now Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) and distributing programs under the American Public Media (APM) brand. He hosted The Morning Program in the weekday drive time slot of 6 to 9 a.m. on KSJR 90.1 FM at St. John's University in Collegeville, which the station called "A Prairie Home Entertainment." The show's eclectic music was a major divergence from the station's usual classical fare. During this time he also began submitting fiction to The New Yorker, where his first story, "Local Family Keeps Son Happy," appeared on September 19, 1970.^[14]

Keillor resigned from The Morning Program in February 1971 to protest what he considered an attempt to interfere with his musical programming. The show became A Prairie Home Companion when he returned in October.^[15]

Keillor has attributed the idea for the live Saturday night radio program to his 1973 assignment to write about the Grand Ole Opry for The New Yorker, but he had already begun showcasing local musicians on the morning show, despite limited studio space for them, and in August 1973 The Minneapolis Tribune reported MER's plans for a Saturday night version of A Prairie Home Companion with live musicians.^[15][16]

A Prairie Home Companion debuted as an old-style variety show before a live audience on July 6, 1974, featuring guest musicians and a cadre cast doing musical numbers and comic skits replete with elaborate live sound effects. The show was punctuated by spoof commercial spots from such fictitious sponsors as Jack's Auto Repair ("All tracks lead to Jack's where the bright shining lights show you the way to complete satisfaction") and Powdermilk Biscuits, which "give shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done."^[15] Later imaginary sponsors have included Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery ("If you can't find it at Ralph's, you can probably get along without it"), Bertha's Kitty Boutique, the Ketchup Advisory Board^[17] (which touted "the natural mellowing agents of ketchup"), the American Duct Tape Council, and Bebop-A-Reebop Rhubarb Pie ("sweetening the sour taste of failure through the generations"). The show also contains parodic serial melodramas, such as The Adventures of Guy Noir, Private Eye and The Lives of the Cowboys. After the show's intermission, Keillor reads clever and often humorous greetings to friends and family at home submitted by members of the theater audience in exchange for an honorarium.

Also in the second half of the show, the broadcasts showcase a weekly monologue by Keillor entitled The News from Lake Wobegon. The town is based in part on Keillor's own hometown of Anoka, Minnesota, and in part on Freeport and other towns in Stearns County, where he lived in the early 1970s.^[18] Lake Wobegon is a quintessential but fictional Minnesotan small town "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." A Prairie Home Companion ran until 1987, when Keillor decided to end it; he worked on other projects, including another live radio program, "The American Radio Company of the Air" — which had almost the same format as A Prairie Home Companion's — for several years. In 1993 he began producing A Prairie Home Companion again, in a format nearly identical to the original's, and has done so since.^[19] On A Prairie Home Companion, Keillor receives no billing or credit (except "written by Sarah Bellum," a joking reference to his own brain); his name is not mentioned unless a guest addresses him by his first name or the initials "G. K.," though some sketches feature Keillor as his alter ego, Carson Wyler.

A Prairie Home Companion regularly goes on the road and is broadcast live from popular venues around the United States, often featuring local celebrities and skits incorporating local color. In April 2000, he took the programme to Edinburgh, Scotland and gave two performances in the city's Queen's Hall. These were broadcast by BBC Radio on 1 and 8 April. He also toured Scotland with the program to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

Keillor also sometimes gives broadcast performances of a similar nature that do not carry the "Prairie Home Companion" brand, as in his 2008 appearance at the Oregon Bach Festival.^[20]

In a March 2011 interview with the AARP Bulletin, Keillor announced that he would be retiring from A Prairie Home Companion in 2013^[21], but in a December 2011 interview with the Sioux City Journal, Keillor told the interviewer "The show is going well. I love doing it. Why quit?"^[22] His publicist later confirmed that "He doesn't have any specific plans to retire. He's still having a lot of fun doing the show."^[23]

Keillor is also the host of The Writer's Almanac which, like A Prairie Home Companion, is produced and distributed by American Public Media. The Writer's Almanac is also available online^[24] and via daily e-mail installments by subscription.^[25]