Marilyn Hagerty

Marilyn Hagerty (born May 30, 1926) is a newspaper columnist writing for the Grand Forks Herald. She has been with the paper since 1957, when her late husband Jack Hagerty (1918-1997) became editor of the paper. Hagerty gained fame in March 2012 when her review of a new Olive Garden restaurant in Grand Forks, North Dakota, was noticed by online news aggregators and became an overnight sensation among both critics and admirers. Anthony Bourdain announced plans to collaborate with Hagerty. Hagerty was awarded the 2012 Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media. Hagerty appeared as a guest Quickfire Challenge judge on Top Chef: Seattle “Even the Famous Come Home.”

Hagerty's career in newspapering began in the 1940s when she was a high school student and worked for the Pierre, South Dakota Capital Journal. By the 1970s, Hagerty had a regular column, and she also began a column of historical reminiscences, That Reminds Me. She was reviewing restaurants at least by 1976. She retired from full-time newspapering in 1991, but soon came back with a part-time schedule but a full-time workload. Hagerty writes five columns for the paper, and does not consider herself a food critic.

Her columns are full of unexpected observations similar to yogiisms, such as: "The Little Bangkok restaurant promotes the items for which they have ingredients on any given day."

Two collections of Hagerty's columns have been published:

In March 2012, for her "Eatbeat" column, Hagerty wrote a review of a recently opened Olive Garden restaurant in Grand Forks, ND. The review was overall positive, stating that "the chicken Alfredo ($10.95) was warm and comforting on a cold day," and calling the Olive Garden "the largest and most beautiful restaurant now operating in Grand Forks." The review began to be linked to by various blogs the day after it was published, due to the novelty of an unironic, positive review of a chain restaurant. In an interview, she said she was unfazed by the attention, though she found much of it "rather condescending". She was covered by Good Morning America, appeared March 20, 2012 on Anderson and interviewed on The Today Show and CNN, among others.

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