1964 Graduate Spends Years Among Elite Politicians, Actors In Hollywood

By Natalie Bruzon
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Linda Barton Keil describes herself as a small-town girl at heart. 

Her life, however, has been anything but small. 

When Keil first moved away from Orchard after graduating in 1964, she never imagined she’d cross paths with some of the world’s most influential people. 

Keil first moved to Oklahoma City and then Tennessee with her husband, Richard Keil of Inman. Eventually, they found their way Denver, Colorado, where Keil first started working for American Industrialist Marvin Davis’s son-in-law, Nebil Zarif. What seemed at the time like a temporary paycheck turned into a life-changer for the Keils.

“I was sent on a temp assignment there,” said Keil. “Mr. Davis’s son-in-law was Turkish. He had this personality, not a very good one towards women. He couldn’t keep anybody working for him. So he had me interviewing women for him, but they just had to be a certain this or certain that, and it was ridiculous. So finally he just said, ‘This is ridiculous, Ms. Linda. You know what I want, you work for me!’”

Not long after Keil started working for Zarif, Marvin Davis bought Twentieth Century Fox and moved out to California along with his daughters and son-in-laws. 

“I started working for him and his wife and I just took care of everything. Absolutely everything. And then Mr. Davis bought Twentieth Century Fox and moved to California and he of course wanted all his children to come with him so they went out there too,” explained Keil. “And I continued working for his office for a while and they called and wanted me to come up and they took us out and I just couldn’t see myself in LA. Plus, we had two kids still in high school and I said I wasn’t going to move them and I just needed to be here in Denver so we came back and I went to work for an attorney.”

For Keil, family always came first, and moving two of her daughters who were still in school to a different state didn’t seem like a good idea at the time. However, some time later things changed. 

“Then one day he called me and it was just a good time,” Keil said. “My husband had left his job and it was just the right moment that he called and he made me all these offers. Mr. Davis’s private airplane was a 727 and he had gutted it and it was like a flying hotel suite. Absolutely beautiful. And he told me that we or our children could fly back and forth anytime on that because it came and went from Denver to LA twice a week.”

After talking it over, the Keil family came to an agreement that could work for them. Keil moved out to California with her husband and youngest, while her daughter who was finishing up her senior year stayed to live with her sister. 

“I chaperoned as many school activities living out there in California as I would living (in Denver),” said Keil, who used the Davis private jet to make more than frequent visits to Denver. 
“I worked out there for him until 2004. Nancy and her husband Nebil ended up getting a divorce which was really messy,” explained Keil. “About three months before, I had quit because I knew what was going on and I just didn’t approve of it so I just left. Then after she found out that he had been having numerous affairs she left him too.”

Keil had become a regular in the famil,; however, and Nancy Davis was set on keeping her around. So, after receiving various offers she couldn’t resist, Keil agreed to go back to work for Davis. 

“I ended up doing that and one of the things was that I could make my own hours or I could work from home,” said Keil. “So most of the time I worked from home unless we were having a big event or anything. I would go into the office twice a week.”

It was during this time that Keil became acquainted with some of President Ronald Reagan’s staff, who had an office in the same building where she worked. Eventually, they convinced Keil she needed to work for them, and she became the assistant to the director of the Ronald Reagan Foundation. 

“I worked for the director and he thought of all his employees as not his staff but his colleagues and so anybody that would come to the library, because we had freedom awards every year, so one year it went to Colin Powell and one year to Margaret Thatcher and you know people like that,” said Keil. “He would introduce us to them as these are my colleagues. So that’s how we got to meet so many world leaders.”

Keil had the opportunity to meet some of the most influential people in the world, including President Ronald Reagan. She attended big parties, and enjoyed lunches out with Reagan and his staff. 

Although one could argue that Keil’s life is a series of coincidences, Keil says she has her small-town values to thank.

“I never lost sense of my upbringing and I believed in loyalty,” said Keil. “I didn’t talk or spread rumors in the office or anything. I was just there to work and be loyal to who I worked for.”

When it comes down to it, Keil never lost touch with her roots. Family was her number one priority, and when her recently-widowed daughter said she needed to move to be closer to her husband’s grave, Keil and her husband didn’t hesitate to quit their jobs and make the move with her. 

Today, Keil is back in Denver, Colorado, with her husband and family. However, there’s a part of her that still considers her friends in Orchard home. 
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“It was a shock moving to Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, but I never lost my country girl upbringing I was still me. I didn’t let anybody change it,” Keil concluded. “I love coming back (to Orchard), it just means the world to me.”