Garrison Keillor - Personal Life

Personal Life

Keillor was born in Anoka, Minnesota, the son of Grace Ruth (née Denham) and John Philip Keillor, who was a carpenter and postal worker. 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 and has Scots ancestry. Keillor is a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. 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. 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:

• 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.

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

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. 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. He returned to work a few days later.