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DAN GUNDERSON: The woman Minnesotans came to know simply as Coya, was born Cornelia Gjesdal. She grew up on a North Dakota farm. Her family gave her the nickname Coya. It later became her political identity.

She experienced politics early in life. Her father was a prairie populist, part of a socialist movement called the Nonpartisan League. Coya dreamed of being an opera star. She graduated from Concordia College in Moorhead, then she moved to new York to study at Juilliard School of Music. After a year, she gave up her dream and moved home.

Coya married Andy Knutson and settled on a small farm near Oakley in Northwest Minnesota. She taught school and ran a small hotel with Andy. He drank heavily, and their marriage soured. Coya was restless. She started thinking about politics.

CORNELIA GJESDAL: And I thought, holy smokes, there must be something more to this world than where I am. So I busted out.

DAN GUNDERSON: That's vintage Coya. It's part of a conversation recorded by a young family member in 1990 for a school project. It's one of only a few surviving recorded conversations with Coya. Coya planned her escape from Oakley.

She first got involved in county politics. Soon, the DFL party asked her to run for the state legislature. She won a seat in the state house in 1950 and was re-elected in 1952. But Coya had her eye on a bigger prize. She wanted a seat in congress so she could help struggling family farmers.

CORNELIA GJESDAL: When I was living on the farm in Oakley, that's the time that I got interested. Because here were farmers, you know, that didn't make enough money on the farm. And I thought, well, maybe I could make a difference. Maybe I could help it along a little bit.

DAN GUNDERSON: Local DFL officials told Coya, they had a candidate for congress. They wanted her to stay in the state legislature. But Coya ignored the wishes of party leaders and challenged the endorsed candidate. She won the primary election. DFL party officials were not happy. Arvonne Fraser was one of the few women inside the DFL power structure in 1954.

ARVONNE FRASER: Coya would start off on the wrong foot by running against an endorsed candidate. That would have been treason at the time.

DAN GUNDERSON: Fraser says, the DFL was trying to move beyond its farmer-labor roots. The party wanted candidates who conveyed an air of sophistication. Coya was a brash, accordion-playing farm wife.

ARVONNE FRASER: She was just too unconventional. They didn't like her loud voice. They didn't like her singing and playing the accordion. She wasn't the proper lady.

DAN GUNDERSON: Coya Knutson had no money for the general election campaign. The party gave her $25. She had some farmland inherited from her father. She sold it for about $5,000. Then she hit the road with a thermos of coffee at her side and her accordion in the back seat. She was ready to play or sing for any occasion, including a visit by a television film crew.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Her adopted son, Terry, was 14 in the summer of '54. He recalls a week spent campaigning in Otter Tail County, a Republican stronghold in the southern end of the ninth district.

TERRY KNUTSON: We slept in the car. I drew the front seat because I was smaller. I could be under the steering wheel. She'd sleep in the back seat. And what we had done is, she'd gone into the courthouse in Fergus Falls, bought the plat book-- I remember this so well-- for the county that lists everybody's farm-- you know, who the farm owner is. So she'd lay out which farms to visit each day.

And then, you'd wake up early in the morning sleeping in the car. She'd meet the farmers in the barn. And then she'd start milking with them and talking politics.

DAN GUNDERSON: Farmers didn't know what to make of this woman. She talked their language. She understood farming, and she met them in the barn. Word spread and the crowds grew at campaign stops.

Bill Kjeldahl was Coya's campaign manager. This was his first political campaign. He loved the excitement. Farmers were a key constituency in the ninth district. County fairs were the place to meet big crowds of farmers in 1954. Bill Kjeldahl can still see Coya standing outside the grandstand, surrounded by a crowd of curious farmers.

BILL KJELDAHL: It's kind of funny. I remember those farmers time and again. You know, they'd have their coat of town overalls on, brand new overalls. She just had 'em in her hip pocket. She was just one of them.

DAN GUNDERSON: Farmers who were upset with Republican farm policy turned out big for Coya in November. She upset the incumbent Republican congressman. With campaign manager Bill Kjeldahl in tow, she headed for Washington DC. Coya didn't know what to expect in the nation's capital.

CORNELIA GJESDAL: You see, I was so new to everything that it was all exciting. It was all wonderful. And all the time, I was scared to death.

DAN GUNDERSON: The upset win got noticed in Washington. House speaker Sam Rayburn offered her any committee seat she wanted. Coya Knutson became the first woman to sit on the powerful House Agriculture Committee. She quickly made friends in the Capitol corridors.

There were articles in the "New York Times" and the "Washington Post." Reporters loved the plainspoken Minnesota farm wife with the infectious laugh. In this interview on the NBC home show, she charmed the host. Esther Tufty was known around Washington as The Duchess.

ESTHER TUFTY: It's awfully hard to decide that you're a real farmer. Are you a real farmer, Coya?

CORNELIA GJESDAL: Well, Dutchess, I've lived on the farm most of my life, and I've done almost every kind of work there is to be done on the farm. And--

ESTHER TUFTY: Really? I mean, taking grain to market and running a tractor?

CORNELIA GJESDAL: That's right. I have done all those things. And there was just one job I didn't care about on the farm, though.

ESTHER TUFTY: What was that?

CORNELIA GJESDAL: Feeding the pigs.

DAN GUNDERSON: Coya appeared to be loving the attention, but later in life, she remembered feeling overwhelmed.

CORNELIA GJESDAL: It was just so much coming at you all the time. All the publicity, I wasn't prepared for that. I wanted to do my job. Forget the publicity. To Dickens with it. And just let me get on with my business.

But there were reporters at every stop, every place, all over the place, followed you all around. And they had to know everything, you know? What they didn't know, they made up.

DAN GUNDERSON: The new congresswoman was trying to change her image. She made a conscious effort to look more sophisticated. She colored her hair blonde, wore nicer clothes, and played down her Scandinavian accent.

Coya quickly learned her way around congress. Her primary legislative interest was agriculture. Her mission was saving the family farm. But she championed other notable causes.

She authored legislation which created the federal student loan program. She convinced lawmakers to start funding research into the deadly disease cystic fibrosis. Her chief of staff, Bill Kjeldahl, remembers watching in amazement as she got her way with speaker Sam Rayburn and the mostly male members of congress.

BILL KJELDAHL: She was so positive. There was no escape. She just asked people for stuff, and she'd get it. And she was sitting so well with the speaker that other members asked her to get something from there. Well, she just went right to his office, and they'd get it for you. And he was just friendly. She just had the run of the place.

DAN GUNDERSON: But Coya's personal life was not going so well. She barely spoke with husband Andy back in Oakley. Son Terry spent the summer of 1955 volunteering in his mother's Washington office. He says, Coya had no friends outside congress.

TERRY KNUTSON: No social life at all. She was lonely, very lonely. She worked seven days a week. And Sundays, she'd go out to national airport to eat lunch just so she'd be around a crowd. Then she'd go into the office alone, Sunday afternoons.

DAN GUNDERSON: Coya was likely to spend those Sunday afternoons scanning the newspapers from back home. Anyone who got married or had a baby was likely to get a congratulatory note. Coya sent a weekly column to newspapers in the ninth district. It was called Coya's Capital Chat.

She demanded prompt constituent service from her staff. Relations with the DFL party were a much lower priority. Coya felt she owed no loyalty to the party leaders. After all, they didn't help get her elected. She didn't want their advice.

CORNELIA GJESDAL: They wanted to run me. They wanted to run my office. They wanted to put people they wanted into my office. My goodness, I didn't want to do that. I was the boss of my office. To heck with them.

DAN GUNDERSON: Coya was stubborn. The more party leaders pressured her, the deeper she dug in her heels. That independence angered DFL leaders, who placed a high value on party loyalty. A storm was building. It would soon end Coya's political career.

The last straw was the 1956 presidential campaign. Estes Kefauver and Adlai Stevenson were competing for the democratic nomination. In Minnesota, Hubert Humphrey was the star of the DFL party. He was hoping to be Adlai Stevenson's running mate. So naturally, the DFL party desperately wanted Stevenson to win the state primary.

Coya Knutson threw her support behind Estes Kefauver. She knew farmers supported Kefauver. Kefauver beat Stevenson in the Minnesota primary. It was a humiliating loss for Hubert Humphrey and the DFL party. Arvonne Fraser was the DFL party insider. She says, party leaders were furious.

ARVONNE FRASER: This was the threat to the party leadership. And it was intense. People hated each other for the rest of their lives based on that split.

DAN GUNDERSON: The stage was set for a political drama that would play out on the front page of newspapers across the country. Party leaders let Coya know she was in trouble. The DFL party chairman wrote to Coya, demanding she tow the party line. Coya refused.

Rumors began circulating that Coya was having an affair with her chief of staff, Bill Kjeldahl. Then, just before the district convention in 1958, reporters got a letter. It was signed by Coya's husband, Andy. This letter was printed in newspapers around the country.

SPEAKER: April 29th, 1958. My dear wife. Coya, I want you to tell the people of the ninth district this Sunday that you are true in politics, that you want to go home and make a home for your husband and son. As your husband, I compel you to do this.

I'm tired of being torn apart from my family. I am sick and tired of having you run around with other men all the time and not your husband. I love you, honey. Your husband, Andy Knutson.

DAN GUNDERSON: Coya knew her troubled marriage was a potential political disaster. In fact, she wrote a speech for the 1956 district convention explaining Andy's alcoholism and her estrangement from him. But she never gave that speech. Advisors told her the public would not understand.

In 1958, Andy's letter made Coya's dysfunctional marriage national news. Headlines trumpeted "Coya, come home." The phrase would forever define Coya Knutson. The infamous letter still prompts vigorous debate nearly 50 years later. Some are convinced it came from the highest levels of the DFL party. Others contend it was written on a kitchen table by local party officials.

Harding Noblitt was a DFL party insider in the 1950s. He also taught political science at Concordia College in Moorhead. Noblitt says, he's certain of one thing-- Andy Knutson did not write the "Coya, come home" letter.

HARDING NOBLITT: And old Andy, I don't know, somebody might have paid him or bought him a few drinks or something to get him to sign the darn thing, you see? And their arguments, yeah, about who actually wrote the thing and who induced him to. And the people who ought to know have told me, in recent years, that they don't know for sure who wrote the darn thing. They're all convinced that Andy didn't write it. But he did sign it.

DAN GUNDERSON: The mystery of who wrote the letter is well guarded by those who know. Gretchen Beito spent several years researching and writing a biography of Congresswoman Coya Knutson. The letter remains one of the few stories that still elude her.

GRETCHEN BEITO: The closest I've come even since-- yes, I was there. I was in this-- it was a smoke filled room. And it was late. It was, in fact, early in the morning. And the whole group of DFLers here were agreed that she had to go. And she was going to go no matter what.

DAN GUNDERSON: Many of Coya's friends and political allies abandoned her. Arvonne Fraser watched what happened from the DFL state office. She felt what was happening to Coya was wrong. But in 1958, women did not speak out.

ARVONNE FRASER: I guess I saw it. But I was part of the group. I'm one of the guilty. We talk about it among women now. Why didn't we speak up? But we didn't stand up to defend her. And I feel very sad about that.

DAN GUNDERSON: The scandal shook Coya and those close to her. Former aide, Bill Kjeldahl, says it was months before he could pick up a newspaper and read about politics without getting physically ill. He's still angry. Kjeldahl says Coya lost her will to campaign. She didn't have the stomach for a personal fight.

BILL KJELDAHL: You know, it was hard for her to face something-- somebody after a confrontation. I think that's true. And there was only two or three times that I ever saw her in a confrontation. You just never saw it. They wound up taking the starch out of her completely.

DAN GUNDERSON: Coya Knutson lost the 1958 election by 1,390 votes to republican Odin Langen. She was the only incumbent democrat to lose a seat in congress that year. Minnesota voters wouldn't send another woman to congress for 42 years.

Soon after the '58 election, Coya and Andy were divorced. And he died a few years later. Coya ran and lost again in 1960. She stayed in Washington DC and got a job at the defense department.

After she retired, Coya ran for congress in 1977. She lost the DFL primary. She quickly faded from the Minnesota political scene, remembered mostly for the "Coya, come home" headline. Bill Kjeldahl doubts she will ever get the recognition she deserves in Minnesota. Kjeldahl says, his stomach still churns when he thinks about what happened nearly 50 years ago.

BILL KJELDAHL: It just made me mad, you know, that there could be democrats like that. You know, I sure do remember a glorious person, just fantastic. I couldn't have been more privileged to have a better candidate to work for-- never.

DAN GUNDERSON: Political observers are still divided about Coya Knutson's place in Minnesota history. Retired professor and political activist Harding Noblitt says, Coya always got more attention than she deserved.

HARDING NOBLITT: Her big important, as you look at it in history, was that she was the first effective woman candidate for higher office. But she's always received more attention than the typical two-term congressman would who was not involved in any big issues that everybody knew about.

DAN GUNDERSON: A distinctly different view is held by Mary Pruitt. The Minneapolis community college professor is writing a book about Coya Knutson. She sees an ongoing effort to discredit Coya.

MARY PRUITT: She never did anything. She never passed a bill. Nobody besides a couple of loonies up in the ninth district ever cared about her. Well, that's not true. She was a star on the national stage.

DAN GUNDERSON: Pruitt points to the federal student loan program, school lunch legislation, and cystic fibrosis research as three significant achievements of Coya Knutson's time in congress. Those who knew Coya Knutson best say, she wasn't one to look back and wonder what might have been. How would Coya want to be remembered? Author Gretchen Beito asked her that question.

GRETCHEN BEITO: And she said, oh. ho, ho, ho. She laughed, and she said, no, I dreamed they put a statue of me on the Capitol mall. Well, there's your answer.

DAN GUNDERSON: Congresswoman Coya Knutson died in 1996. She's most remembered for three words-- Coya, come home. She's still a complicated, charismatic, and divisive figure in the history of the DFL party.

A year after she died, some state lawmakers wanted to build a memorial at the Capitol in Saint Paul. The legislation failed to become law. There are no statues honoring the first Minnesota woman elected to congress.

Dan Gunderson, Minnesota public radio. Moorhead