North Dakota newspaper columnist whose Olive Garden review went viral dies at 99

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Marilyn Hagerty, a North Dakota newspaper columnist whose earnest became a social media sensation, died Tuesday. She was 99.

Hagerty died at a hospital in Grand Forks of complications related to a stroke she had suffered, her daughter Gail Hagerty said. She was always a journalist at heart who took the effort to get to know people and the community, her daughter said.

“When she wanted to talk about restaurants, she wanted to write not some kind of critical review, but instead tell people what they would expect if they went to a particular restaurant,” Gail Hagerty said.

Marilyn Hagerty was born May 30, 1926, in Pierre, South Dakota. Her career in newspapers began while she was in high school, assisting the editor of the Pierre Capital Journal and writing city brief