Margaret Isabel Rages Boyd was born the morning after large tornado on June 2nd, 1927, grew up as the youngest of six children born into a farming family in Missouri during the Great Depression. Maggie was influenced by her five older sisters who all became music teachers, and her older brother who was sent overseas to fight in World War II when she was a teenager. Though her family lost their farm when they owed just $50 on their mortgage, they survived that era of devastation by focusing their efforts on education and on making music as a family. “The more I think of it, the more I realize that music kept us alive. There was always music, if someone wasn’t plunking on the piano, they were singing.”

Maggie hopped up onto the bench of the family piano when she was about 3 and soon was playing in four part harmony. (Her first work, “The Cat Ate my Bird” was written when she was 4. ) She surprised her mother one morning in church by singing alto to her mother’s soprano only on intuition around the age of 4. In community gatherings and in “productions” at community events, Maggie was the default accompanist, playing sophisticated renditions of music she’d only heard once or so before. There was never any money for lessons, and Maggie could never learn how to read music. However, she faked her way through music school, earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education while playing the flute in orchestral ensembles. She met Dale Boyd at college  (he had just come home from the war) and they were married within a year, at age 21 and 24 respectively. 

Dale’s work as an Aerospace engineer took them from Seattle, WA to Nashua, NH, and then finally to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where they stayed until Dale’s passing of a heart attack at age 81 in 2005. Maggie lives at Chelsea Retirement Center in Chelsea Michigan, just 15 minutes away from the home of her youngest son Jon and daughter-in-law Pamela in Ann Arbor.