Mary Finch Hoyt, press secretary to Rosalynn Carter, dies at 89 Mrs. Hoyt was a native of a small California town who said she was "trained to be a wife and homemaker." Her first husband was killed in a military training accident during World War II. She said her second spouse was an alcoholic, and she described her third marriage as a practical-minded "business deal." "I did not think I could raise two boys as a woman alone," she once said, "and he didn't think he could get ahead in the academic world without a wife." When the marriage ended, Mrs. Hoyt found herself in Washington with two young sons she was determined to support. She launched a freelance career writing for magazines such as Cosmopolitan and became network-savvy in a city of political operators. As she advanced, she was the object of much envy for her impeccably coiffed presence in the bruising world of presidential politics. She was described as hard-driving, acerbic and coolly efficient. After two years as the Peace Corps's director of radio and television, Mrs. Hoyt became press secretary to Jane Muskie, whose husband, Edmund, a senator from Maine, was Hubert Humphrey's running mate on the Democratic ticket in 1968. When the team lost the general election to Richard M. Nixon, Mrs. Hoyt became the Washington bureau chief for Ladies" Home Journal. In the 1972 presidential race, she served as press secretary to Eleanor McGovern, whose husband, George, a senator from South Dakota, lost in a landslide to Nixon. Mrs. Hoyt co-authored Eleanor McGovern's forthright and well-received 1974 memoir, "Uphill," and became a partner in a public relations firm. A Peace Corps colleague who was close to former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter helped lure Mrs. Hoyt back into politics during the 1976 presidential campaign. She was tapped as Rosalynn Carter's press aide. After Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald R. Ford, Mrs. Hoyt accompanied Rosa­lynn to the White House's East Wing, the first lady's side of the residence. Mrs. Hoyt, 53 at the time, declared herself "the token, Eastern Establishment geriatric female on this staff." The Carters arrived in Washington largely unknown to the city's political and social elites, and they were the subject of curiosity, not least because of their disregard for formality. Mrs. Hoyt refused to call the president Jimmy, as he had requested. Mrs. Hoyt's job was to explain the public life of the first lady to the news media, but Rosalynn Carter's early disregard for protocol left Mrs. Hoyt fuming at times. On one occasion, the first lady and a friend took a commercial jetliner to New York for a shopping spree without informing her press secretary. Mrs. Hoyt was scorched by the media for her ignorance of her boss's whereabouts, and she conveyed her displeasure to the first lady.