Grace Keillor, mother of ‘Prairie Home Companion’ host Garrison Keillor, dies in Minn. at 97

BROOKLYN PARK, Minn. – Grace Keillor, the mother of “A Prairie Home Companion” host Garrison Keillor, has died at age 97.

Garrison Keillor says his mother died Friday at her home in Minnesota “with her children around her holding her hand and singing hymns.”

Keillor says his mother “had a good long life and was still lucid a couple weeks ago and even had a good laugh about a dream she had.”

Grace Ruth Denham was born in Minneapolis on May 7, 1915. She married John Keillor in 1936, and the couple raised six children in a Brooklyn Park house that John Keillor built in 1947.

John Keillor died in 2001. Garrison Keillor says his mother stayed in the house, “entertaining her family, playing Scrabble, reading, singing hymns and praying for her loved ones.”