The popular longtime TV face of a favorite Maine department store has moved on to her next act.
Karmo Sanders, an actress and playwright known by many in Maine as “The Marden’s Lady,” has died at the age of 74.
“You Should Have Bought It – When You Saw It – At Marden’s!”
An obituary posted by Hobbs Funeral Home states Sanders passed away peacefully Saturday at her Scarborough home.
The Marden’s Lady was on TV screens all over Maine for years until the salvage store chain ended the ad campaign in 2013.
Back then, she told CBS13 she was using the character in her standup comedy act.
“We have opportunity in this lifetime to be happy or sad, it’s pretty simple,” Sanders said during her heyday. “I chose happy.”
Sanders also wrote a musical and a play.
She once even considered a run for governor, a job her former boss, former Marden’s general manager, Paul LePage, achieved.
The Marden’s Lady said that while she wasn’t political, she believed the climate in Augusta needed to improve.
A page right out of her ex-boss’ playbook!
According to her obituary, most recently she’d been teaching playwriting and acting at University of Southern Maine.
Martha Lello was born in Norway, Maine, on January 31, 1951, the eldest daughter of Rev. Jellison and Mary N. Lello.
From an early age, she was bound for the stage. She brought comedy, drama and a vibrant presence into every aspect of her life.
Karmo met her husband, Jerry Sanders, in the Drama Department at Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma.
Together, they pursued writing and theater careers while raising their two daughters, Hanna and Jennywren, in southern Maine in the mid-1970s.
Karmo stormed the local theater scene in the 1980s and never looked back. She performed in countless productions in Maine, New Hampshire, and Kentucky.
In the early 1990s, Karmo and Jerry wrote and produced the high school musical “Spellbound,” which highlighted the teen-age struggles of acceptance and self-love.
With their longtime collaborator Steve Underwood, Jerry and Karmo then wrote and produced the musical review “Radical Radio,” which delighted young audiences across the eastern seaboard.
In 2001, Karmo earned her masters degree in creative writing from Boston University. There, she continued writing and contributing to the Boston Theater Marathon under the tutelage of Kate Snodgrass.
