“It was a quiet week in Lake Wobegon …”

With these words Garrison Keillor captivates a weekly audience of three million radio listeners, holding them happily hostage to his warm, mellifluous voice while spinning a deceptively simple tale of love and misunderstanding in the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, Minn.

Ames got a taste of Keillor’s brand of humor and folksy whimsy Saturday night when Keillor brought his radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion,” to CY Stephens Auditorium. In front of a sold-out audience of more than 2,500, Keillor hosted his two-hour variety show, broadcast live across the country on public radio.

In addition to his famous tales of Lake Wobegon, the show included local music, skits and gentle riffs about Iowa State.

Keillor emerged in a black tuxedo and bowtie about five minutes before the start of the broadcast to inform the audience that the ISU men’s basketball team had beaten Kansas.

“We even know about them in Minnesota, and we are impervious to most things,” Keillor said.

Keillor, a tall, jowly man, then introduced the performers for the evening, which included the Barn Owl Band, the house band for the Central Iowa Barn Dance Association in Ames. He joked they were a “typical Midwestern string band, and it’s time to get back to what they wish were their roots,” after noting the band consisted of professors, researchers and professionals.

Other performers in the two-hour show also included Dave Moore, a well-known musician from Iowa City who plays guitar, accordion and harmonica. He elicited laughs from the audience when singing a song he co-wrote with elementary school children from Postville about turkeys and their fate at the Postville meat-packing plant.

Two actors, a “sound guy” and Keillor created countless characters in several skits during the course of the show, including “Guy Noir,” the story of a 1940s-style detective, replete with mysterious women and dry wit.

Sue Scott and Tim Russell, regulars on the program, provided voices, while Fred Newman was a one-man sound machine, creating the sounds of falling raindrops, slamming doors and background radios.

Playing dual roles as a live performance and a radio show, performers silently took their places on stage while the house band played bluegrass and the stage crew moved microphones.

“It’s part of making sure that when you listen to the show it seems seamless,” said Alan Frechtman, VIP for Special Projects for the program.

“The show is constantly in flux,” Frechtman said. “Everyone plays off Garrison, and he never seems to be nervous. You could do the show with him and a piano player.”

Frechtman said the show is never rehearsed in any particular order and changes are made 30 minutes before air time “according to how things are going time-wise.”

“The whole process is pretty laid-back, but you know you’re with a guy who never stops working,” Frechtman said.

The show came to Ames as part of WOI Radio’s 80th birthday celebration. WOI Radio Group, Iowa’s public radio station, can be found on the dial at 640 AM and 90.1 FM and is broadcast from the Communications Building at Iowa State. The show normally airs Saturday from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. and again on Sunday at 1 p.m.

Don Wirth, associate general manager for WOI, said he hoped the show would serve as an introduction to public radio.

“If we can get people to find it and listen to it, they will,” Wirth said.

Rita Ann Carpenter of West Des Moines is already a fan of the public radio show. She came to Ames for basketball games and when she found out the Keillor was here she scrambled for tickets.

“We’ve been listening . for 10 years,” Carpenter said.