The invocation begins solemnly enough at an aging conference sponsored by Home Instead, the Omaha-based home care service for seniors.
“God our Father, you know all that Home Instead believes in and strives for, and we ask your blessing…”
Maybe it’s her sweet and innocent face, aged to perfection. Or maybe it’s her soft voice in the alto register, so pleasing to the ear. It might also be the way she keeps her head down and eyelids fluttering demurely that lulls the audience into thinking, “Oh, she is a dear little thing.”
Then the invocation starts to veer into a more secular tone.
“You see, Lord, this is the first time I’ve ever been old. And it just sort of crept up on me.”
That’s when Mary Maxwell launches her first zinger.
“There were signs…like random hair growth. That’s special. Particularly the first time you go and brush a hair off your lapel and discover it’s attached to your chin.”
After a brief “Wait, what?” moment, the smattering of giggles erupts into full-blown laughter, as the audience realizes Maxwell is actually a standup comic—and a real pro at that.
“It’s how she delivers things, her timing, that’s perfect and part of her charm,” said longtime friend Dr. Amy Haddad, a retired professor in health sciences at Creighton University. Haddad’s husband, retired Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Nebraska CEO Steve Martin, added, “She knows how to wait for it. That’s a natural talent of hers.”
Maxwell inherited her wit and poise from the father she adored, banking executive J. Francis McDermott. He was a frequent keynote speaker and emcee at various Omaha events. From the time she was little, Maxwell watched and learned.
Born in 1936 as one of six children, she boasts a lofty Omaha lineage. “I’m a Creighton!” she said with pride. “My name is Mary Creighton McDermott Maxwell. My maternal grandmother was a Creighton.”
The McDermott family lived in the shadow of St. Cecilia’s Cathedral, where she attended both grade and high school. As a fifth grader, she met a boy named Chuck Maxwell, who was a year older. Like her father, Chuck Maxwell would loom large in her life.
After graduating from Rosary College, now Dominican University, in Illinois with a double major in philosophy and Latin, Maxwell returned to Omaha with a singular purpose.
“My husband didn’t realize he was going to marry me as early as I did. He was a little slower on that,” she deadpanned. “He was the draw to lure me back home.”
Chuck and Mary Maxwell raised four sons and one daughter in the same Cathedral neighborhood where they had grown up. After a career at Mutual of Omaha, Chuck became alumni director at his alma mater, Creighton University.
“For my vacation every year, Chuck took the five kids to Kansas City for a week and let me stay home alone. It was heaven,” she said with a straight face.
The couple enjoyed a wide circle of friends from the business and civic arenas, and Maxwell became involved in many women’s organizations. By her late 40s, she had developed a reputation as a good speaker, someone who wasn’t too shy to stand up and start talking. Word started to spread about her ability to draw laughs. Soon her audiences shifted from small women’s groups to gatherings of the Chamber of Commerce and other large events. Her jangled nerves necessitated her deadpan persona.
“I do (the routines) with a straight face, and I never laugh at myself and rarely smile because I was so nervous at the beginning,” she explained. “I was afraid if I smiled, my mouth would start to shake.”
Forty years later, audiences still shake with laughter. Her schticks about needing Bourbon or feeling slighted over never being crowned Queen of Aksarben at the annual philanthropic ball never fall flat.
Her relationship with Home Instead catapulted her to national attention. Her invocation routine has garnered over 25 million views on YouTube. “When it first hit the Internet, I had no idea what viral meant. No clue. I thought it meant you were ill,” she admitted.
A favorite at aging conferences, Maxwell has traveled across the country, including several trips to Florida, as a guest speaker. At the height of her speaking career she averaged 52 engagements per year.
As she defiantly approaches her 88th birthday in November, Maxwell concedes a bothersome right leg and bum knee have slowed her down physically, but the quips never stop, and she laughs easily and often. A widow since 2013, Maxwell basks in the wake of her five successful children and her 17 grandchildren.
She may not have been crowned Queen of Aksarben, as her mother once was, but she is as close to royalty as Omaha will ever have.
“She’s Miss…and Mrs. Omaha,” proclaimed Martin. “She is our treasure.”
A seclection of Mary Maxwell’s comedic videos can be viewed via the Caregiver Stress channel on YouTube.
This article originally appeared in the May 2024 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
