Skip to content

An Evening with Garrison Keillor

Acclaimed American author, humorist and radio personality, Garrison Keillor, heads to the Eismann Center in Richardson January 28 for a live performance! This is one of his final shows….
Garrison Keillor Eismann Center Richardson
microphone Standup perform

Acclaimed American author, humorist and radio personality, Garrison Keillor, heads to the Eismann Center in Richardson January 28 for a live performance! This is one of his final shows….

Best known as the host of A Prairie Home Companion (APHC), a wildly popular radio show, he is also host to a daily radio show and online program The Writers Almanac, all of which attract more than 17 million listeners each week. At this 30-city “America the Beautiful” farewell tour, he will share hilarious anecdotes about growing up in the American midwest, the people of Lake Wobegon, and “late-life fatherhood” where he combines storytelling with a wonderfully dry sense of humor. 

Garrison Keillor

A Brief History

For those who showed up on July 6, 1974, at the Janet Wallace Auditorium at Macalester College in Saint Paul and plunked down a $1 admission (50 cents for kids) to attend the very first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, they were in select company. About 12 people completed the audience. But those in attendance thought there were worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon, so Garrison Keillor and the APHC team went on to produce close to 500 live shows in the first 10 years alone. Broadcasts were held at multiple venues, until March 4, 1978, when the show moved to The World Theater, a lovely, crumbling building that was one plaster crack away from the wrecking ball. 

In June of 1987, APHC ended for a while. Garrison thought it was a good idea at the time, but only two years later, the show was back, based in New York and called American Radio Company of the Air. But there’s no place like home. So in 1992, it was back to Minnesota and, soon after, back to the old name: A Prairie Home Companion.

Plenty of adventure has been had the past 40-plus years, including broadcasts from Canada, Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Iceland and almost every one of the 50 states; wonderful performers, little-known and world-renowned; standing ovations and stares of bewilderment. 

Today, A Prairie Home Companion is heard by four million listeners each week on nearly 700 public radio stations, online, and on the American Forces Networks, SiriusXM Radio, Radio New Zealand and KPRG in Guam. Garrison recalls, “When the show started, it was something funny to do with my friends, and then it became an achievement that I hoped would be successful, and now it’s a good way of life.”

In an interview Monday with the Associated Press, Garrison said he plans to step down as host after next season — following four decades of entertaining listeners with his baritone voice and folksy comedy sketches about Lake Wobegon, his mythical Minnesota hometown “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”

AN EVENING WITH GARRISON KEILLOR

When: January 28, 8 p.m.

Where: Charles W. Eisemann Center, 2351 Performance Dr., Richardson, Texas

Cost: $48–59. Purchase online at eisemanncenter.com