Kathryn Sue (Geary) List

24th First Lady initiated mansion artwork and cookbook projects

As a modern First Lady, Kathy List stepped up from the expected social role to creating her own projects to benefit the state’s citizens. She founded a non-profit organization to procure artwork for the Governor’s Mansion and created a popular cookbook series that was widely sought after. She also volunteered as a board member for many non-profit organizations.

Before her husband, Robert List, was elected governor, Kathy List worked as a secondary teacher. After the couple’s time in the Mansion was completed, she worked as a real estate agent and continued her involvement with non-profits.

Kathryn “Kathy” Sue Geary was born April 7, 1940, in Indianapolis, Illinois. She was the second child born to parents Timothy E. Geary and Frances Kaufman Geary. An older brother, Thomas, had been born in 1937. When Kathy was just over a year old, her father passed away suddenly at the young age of 41 from coronary thrombosis, leaving her mother with two small children to raise. In April 1947, her mother Francis married Thomas A. Gibbons and soon after Kathy became the older sister to brother John.

Kathy attended Indiana schools including Garfield High School and graduated with honors from Indiana University in June 1962 with majors in French and English. In the summer preceding her graduation, she traveled to Lake Tahoe, Nev., for a summer job as a keno runner at Harrah’s Tahoe Casino and met her future husband, Robert Frank List, at a Fourth of July party at the home of a friend. After a long-distance courtship, they were married the following summer at the List family ranch in Washoe Valley on June 24, 1962, shortly after Kathy had graduated from college in Indiana and Bob from Hastings Law School in San Francisco, Calif. That fall, Kathy began teaching in Carson City and Bob began practicing law.

During the next decade, Kathy taught middle school, high school and classes at the Western Nevada Community College. She also gave birth to three children, Suzette in 1966, Hank in 1969 and Michelle in 1973. Husband Bob had been running for office during those years and had held the positions of Carson City District Attorney and Attorney General of Nevada while working up to become Nevada’s 24th Governor elected in November 1978.

One of Kathy’s projects was the creation of the Kathy List’s Cookbooks printed on newspaper stock and featuring recipes and pictures of the List family and friends. These cookbooks were a hit with the entire Nevada community. There were three volumes and today they sometimes can be found on Etsy or in the belongings of old time Nevadans.

Kathy’s life was about to change. She was now responsible for not just her young children but was expected to participate in statewide activities as befitting the wife of Nevada’s chief politician. The position of First Lady was in transition. Where previously the main duty of First Ladies was accompanying a husband to social events and “pouring/serving” tea at the Governor’s Mansion, First Ladies were now coming into their own. They were expected to have their own projects and interests that would benefit the citizenry of the state. Kathy created the Friends of the Mansion, a non-profit organization dedicated to procuring paintings and art objects from Nevada artists which would then be displayed in the Governor’s Mansion. She served on the executive boards of the American Red Cross and Reno Symphony Orchestra and volunteered with the American Cancer Society, Easter Seals, the Heart Fund, United Way, March of Dimes, Carson Tahoe Hospital Auxiliary and the Arts Alliance. She also took her children to dance practices, school functions, athletic activities and held gatherings for her children’s friends at the Governor’s Mansion.

She, like First Ladies before her, battled rumors of infidelity and the absence of a husband at important times in her children’s lives. The Lists would only serve one term in the Governor’s Mansion and in 1983 they left that life behind them. The loss of privacy was something neither of them would miss.

In 1986, Kathy joined Dickson Realty and in 1988 she and Bob were divorced after close to 25 years of marriage. Her children were older, and she was in the process of establishing a long and successful career in real estate. She obtained her broker’s license in 1990 and membership into the Association of the Realtors Top Producers Club. She was now living and working in Reno, Nev., and through her associations with Dickson Realty, she met her life-long companion, veterinarian Tim Grinsell. They were together enjoying each other and adventures for the rest of their lives.

She continued to remain active in community service and served as chair of both local and state realtors associations’ political affairs committees. She was appointed to serve on the boards of the Nevada’s Women’s Fund, the University of Nevada Reno Foundation as well as the Friends of the University Library. She was also a longtime member of both the Junior League of Reno and the Nevada Museum of Art. And she always found time for family and friends.

On August 24, 2023, Kathryn Sue Geary List passed away in Reno at the age of 83. She is interred at Our Mother of Sorrows Cemetery in Reno, Washoe County Nevada.

Written by Marcia Cuccaro. Researched by Patti Bernard. Updated December 11, 2025.