Brooks: Legendary N.D. columnist Marilyn Hagerty, of viral Olive Garden review fame, dies at 99

In a world that rewards snark and cruelty, Marilyn Hagerty was kind.

Even when she was reviewing a chain restaurant. Even when the food wasn’t much to write home about, the longtime columnist for the Grand Forks Herald could find something nice to say. Even if it was just to compliment the décor.

“As I ate, I noticed the vases and planters with permanent flower displays on the ledges. There are several dining areas with arched doorways. And there is a fireplace that adds warmth to the decor,” she wrote in her 2012 review of the new Olive Garden — “the largest and most beautiful restaurant now operating in Grand Forks."

Hagerty, who forever changed the way we look at an Olive Garden, died Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025, at the age of 99.

Her journalism career spanned almost 70 years, and she was 85 and still reporting when her earnest, endearing review of her hometown’s first Olive Garden launched her to viral fame and a book deal.

Her Olive Garden review was gentle. The internet was not as the story spread, fueled by snide remarks about those simple North Dakotans, wowed by breadsticks.

Hagerty was just as amused by the people bombarding her with comments and interview requests.

She was well aware of the online mockery, and completely unfazed by it. She had a Sunday column to write and an evening bridge game.

“I’m greatly amused,” she said. “Some of the people who email me [from places like New York City] say they’re kind of snobby there.”

Among those charmed by Hagerty’s Olive Garden review was celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, who roared to the defense of the author and the Grand Forks restaurant scene.

“Very much enjoying watching Internet sensation Marilyn Hagerty triumph over the snarkologists (myself included),” he tweeted at the time.

Bourdain went on to write the foreword of her 2013 book “Grand Forks: A History of American Dining in 128 Reviews.” Hagerty, he said, “has a flinty, dry, very sharp sense of humor. She misses nothing. I would not want to play poker with her for money.”

Marilyn Gail Hansen was born May 30, 1926, in Pierre, S.D.; the fourth of the five children born to Danish immigrant Mads Hansen and his Minnesota-born wife, Thyra Linnet.

Her father, who greatly admired education, once told her that the smartest man in town was Bob Hipple, the editor of the Pierre Capital Journal. His daughter began writing for the local newspapers, including the Capital Journal, while she was still in high school.

Money was tight, but she enrolled as a journalism major at the University of South Dakota at Vermillion, where she memorized this lesson from her textbooks: “To do any piece of great writing, you have to care about it tremendously.”

She served as editor of her college newspaper in 1947, when she hired a new sportswriter by the name of Al Neuharth, decades before he would start USA Today and run the Gannett media empire. Sixty-five years later, she would win the Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media.

A born newshound, she could spin a story out of almost anything, including the time she tumbled into an 8-foot-deep trench of muddy water left by street construction in Aberdeen, S.D. Her headline: “Only a Swimmer’s Safe on Hub Streets!”

Marilyn Hagerty went on to write, by the Herald’s estimate, thousands of columns. She “retired” in 1983 and cut back to just 30 hours a week.

In one column, she joked about how nice it would be to have a building named in her honor — nothing too grand, maybe a sewage pumping station. In 2002, Grand Forks Mayor Mike Brown dedicated the Marilyn Hagerty sewage station on the corner of 15th Avenue S. and Belmont Road.

Long after her peers had left North Dakota for warmer climates, she remained, playing bridge, watching basketball and keeping a wry, witty eye on the world around her.

“They had a party for all the old people here last night,” she emailed her son from the assisted-living facility she had moved in to in recent years. “Brought in a so-called band and foolishly expected people to dance. We sat.”