Marjorie Johnson, the witty home baker who was a perennial Minnesota State Fair ribbon winner for more than five decades, died Thursday at 106.
Her son Steven Johnson said she moved to Little Hospice in Edina on Wednesday afternoon. Staff thought she’d be there for weeks.
“She went real fast, peaceful,” he said.
As for the family point of pride that she was the oldest person to win a State Fair blue ribbon: “She liked to win,” he said.
Marjorie Johnson, who was born in 1919 and lived in Robbinsdale, began entering her baked goods in the Minnesota State Fair competitions in 1974 — and won three ribbons that year. Over the years since then, she went on to win more than 3,000 state and county fair ribbons, including two at the 2025 State Fair for her honey yeast bread and gingersnap cookies.
Johnson’s magnetic personality and penchant for baking quickly made a splash, including off the Fairgrounds. Competing in the Pillsbury Bake-Off in 1976 in Boston, as St. Paul Dispatch food writer Eleanor Ostman reported from the scene, Johnson was “the darling of interviewers,” who were “tickled by her enthusiasm, her breathless chatter.”
Locally, Johnson was a regular guest on TV news, especially during Fair season, and appeared nationally on award show red carpets and programs like “The Martha Stewart Show” and “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” whose host invited her back several times to demonstrate recipes and act as a guest correspondent.
In 2007, she wrote a cookbook titled “The Road to Blue Ribbon Baking,” with a foreword by Rosie O’Donnell.
She thought she would be nervous making high-profile TV appearances but was surprised to find she was not, she told the Pioneer Press that year.
“I just try to be myself,” she said. “And I’ve been myself for so many years that it’s the easiest thing to do.”
Related Articles
Obituary: Tom Gunderson, Stillwater bicyclist and coach, dies from bike crash
Goodall’s influence spread far and wide. Those who felt it are pledging to continue her work
Jane Goodall, the celebrated primatologist and conservationist, has died
Obituary: Veteran TV and radio broadcaster Stan Turner was ‘one of the great storytellers’
Sonny Curtis, Crickets member who penned ‘Mary Tyler Moore Show’ theme, dies at 88
Leave a Reply