Knutson was the first woman elected to Congress from Minnesota, and is remembered today for the notorious "Coya, Come Home" letter supposedly written by her then-estranged husband, Andy, urging her to give up her seat and not seek reelection in 1958.

She grew up on the farm where she was born, and inherited her politics from her father, a Populist who belonged to a socialist organization called the Non-Partisan League.

She wanted to run against the district's Republican incumbent, Harold Hagen, but party leaders endorsed another candidate, Curtis Olsson.

Knutson financed her run by selling some land she had inherited from her father, and then barnstormed across the district, driving into farmers' fields to talk to them personally.

She was an effective candidate and overwhelmingly won a five-way primary in an upset, then repeated the feat that fall in the general election as Democrats nationwide returned to majority status in the United States Congress.

In 1956, as Knutson's first term in Congress drew to a close, DFL leaders back in Minnesota had decided to throw their weight behind former Illinois Governor Adlai E. Stevenson as their choice for the Democratic Party's nominee to challenge President Dwight Eisenhower in that year's presidential election, because Stevenson had indicated that he was likely to pick Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey as his running mate.

[citation needed] Ultimately, Stevenson won the Democratic nomination, but Kefauver was chosen over Humphrey as his running mate.

While she had little real social life, rumors (perhaps deliberately started) began to circulate that she and her chief of staff Bill Kjeldahl were having an affair.

[3] Shortly before the 1958 DFL district convention, a letter signed by Andy (but not written by him, the work of Democratic political rivals of Knutson) was circulated to reporters.

The image of a homebound husband longing for his congresswoman wife struck a chord in a time of rigidly defined gender roles.

[citation needed] Knutson divorced Andy in 1962 shortly after failing to win re-election, and he died in 1969 of acute alcohol poisoning.

In 1997 some members of the Minnesota legislature wanted to erect a memorial to her at the Capitol building in St. Paul, but could not pass a bill appropriating the money.