Martha Keys obit

Former Kansas Congresswoman Martha Keys dies at 94

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TOPEKA (KSNT) – Former Kansas Congresswoman Martha Keys has passed away. She was 94 years old.

Grayson Moore, Special Projects Manager for the U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress (FMC), told 27 News that Keys passed away Thursday. Moore said she was an active association member before her health declined recently.

Keys served as a Democratic representative for Kansas’ second Congressional district from 1975 to 1979. She then served as a special adviser to the secretary of the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from February 1979 to May 1980 and as an assistant secretary of education from June 1980 to January 1981. She was the consultant and director for the Center for a New Democracy from 1985 to 1986.

Born in Hutchinson, Kansas, Keys graduated from Paseo High School in Kansas City, Missouri in 1945. She attended Olivet College from 1946 to 1947 and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Missouri–Kansas City in 1951.

Keys was a Democratic campaigner in 1964 and 1968. She ran the McGovern presidential campaign in Kansas in 1972. When Bill Roy retired from the U.S. Congress, her brother-in-law Senator Gary Hart, a Colorado Democrat, persuaded her to run for the seat.

She was elected a Democrat to the United States House of Representatives from Manhattan, Kansas in 1974 and served two terms before being defeated for reelection in 1978. While serving in the House of Representatives, Keys and her husband divorced, and she was remarried to fellow Congressman Andrew Jacobs Jr. They separated in 1981 and eventually divorced.

She then served as a special adviser to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare from February 1979 to May 1980 and as an assistant secretary of education from June 1980 to January 1981. In 1982, Keys was elected to the Common Cause National Governing Board. Afterwards, she worked as a consultant and as director of the Center for a New Democracy from 1985 to 1986.

She married Sam Keys, a university professor and, later, dean of the College of Education at Kansas State University. Keys's sister, Lee, was married to former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart until her death in 2021.