MINNEAPOLIS — There’s a moment in Kelsey Cook’s new special, “Happy Hour,” where the Minnesota-based comedian graduates from solid club comic to first-class artist.

“This next part is hard,” she says before talking about her mother’s dementia. “Sometimes my mom thinks I’m my brother and I’m like, ‘Oooh, I shouldn’t have cut my hair.’”

The joke doesn’t trigger the biggest laughs in “Hour,” taped back in October at St. Paul’s Fitzgerald Theater and premiering Tuesday on Netflix. But pulling off such delicate material is a milestone accomplishment, one that shows how far Cook has come in 17 years of stand-up — and how far she wants to go.

“The longer I do comedy, the more I want to make people do more than laugh,” she said last month over NA cocktails at a suburban Irish bar. “I want them to feel connected.”

It would have been easy for Cook to coast on jokes about aging, airplanes and relationships, leaning hard on Seinfeld-like observations of a warped world.

“My grandparents’ towels are like historical artifacts” she says in her 2023 special, “The Hustler,” which has drawn over 4 million views. “They have washcloths that look like they were woven from wheat. I feel like I’m drying my face with a Triscuit.”

She’s made several appearances on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and co-hosted podcasts with Taylor Tomlinson and boyfriend Chad Daniels.

But Cook is competitive, always looking to top herself, and not just in comedy. That drive has helped her finish high in national foosball championships and win some local tournaments.

“Nobody works harder than Kelsey,” Tomlinson wrote in an email. “She’s one of the best comedians working today and she only gets better and better with each new special.”

Daniels, the only other Minnesota resident with such a national imprint in comedy, marvels at his partner’s dedication to her craft.

“It makes me feel like I’m not doing much,” said Daniels, who is set to marry Cook five days after the Netflix special debuts. “She’ll just sit down and write and rewrite. I don’t have the concentration for that.”

The dementia segment of her act may only be three minutes long, but Cook spent more than a year polishing it on the road.

“I had tried it before, but I didn’t know how to do it without the audience feeling bad for me,” Cook said. “I really had to work hard on bringing this incredibly devastating topic into a comedy show without it being a record-scratch moment.”

The comedian’s mom, Kathy Brainard, is in the National Foosball Hall of Fame. Her dad, Chris Cook, is a former Washington state yo-yo champion and has played trumpet for the Spokane Symphony for more than 45 years. His group, The Spokane Falls Brass Band, performed on “Prairie Home Companion” in the early ’80s at the same venue Cook just happened to pick for the new special, her first for Netflix.

Their daughter’s drive was initially dedicated to sports at Cheney High School in Washington.

“I rebounded a lot of basketballs for her over the years,” said Chris Cook. “There’s video of her draining three-pointers without ever missing. That takes a lot of repetition. She’s definitely a workaholic.”

Cook planned to be a math teacher. But during her junior year at Washington State University, she took a public-speaking class that changed everything.

“I turned all my assignments into comedy sketches,” said Cook, recalling how she once cracked up her class by dressing up as a crazy cat lady. “My professor pulled me aside one day and said, ‘You’re putting way more effort into this than you have to. You should try doing improv or stand-up.’”

After doing open mics at the school cafeteria, Cook became a staple at clubs, first in Spokane and then Seattle.

“I was really dark‚” she said. “One of my early jokes was that I was driving with a friend who had hiccups and she told me to scare her. So I swerved into oncoming traffic. She’s paralyzed now, but the hiccups are gone.“

After moving to Los Angeles around 2014, Cook randomly reached out to national headliner Jim Norton, asking him to appear on her rather obscure podcast. Norton accepted — and then gave her a shot as a regular opener.

“When I found out at my receptionist job, I cried at my desk and then put in my two-week notice,” Cook said. “He’s my comedy fairy godmother.”

Norton, who also tapped Amy Schumer as an opener early in her career, treasured the time he and Cook spent together.

“I was at a fairly low point in life when Kelsey and I toured together and she was a much more valuable friend than she probably realizes,” he wrote in an email to the Star Tribune. “She has the ability to laugh at herself as well. I miss loudly accusing her of stealing when we were at stores, paying at the register.”

Norton is particularly impressed by how Cook handled the rise of her buddy Tomlinson, who would end up hosting CBS’s “After Midnight” and score four Netflix specials.

“There wasn’t an ounce of jealousy or bitterness, just pure joy for the success her friend was having,” Norton said. “That says so much about the person she really is.”

Cook has been a “fairy godmother” of her own. She tapped St. Paul native Tommy Brennan as her regular opener before he joined the cast of “Saturday Night Live” last year. Ali Sultan, a former Minnesotan now living in New York, also raised his profile by going on the road with her.

“She’s a great human being, on and off the stage,” he said. “She’s a star in the making and has a lot more to show.”

But the comic who has made the biggest impact on her life is Daniels.

The two met in 2020 when he was a guest on “Wrists of Fury,” her web series in which she challenged guests in foosball.

“It’s the only thing I can beat him at,” said Cook, who had previously been married to comedian Kane Holloway.

Cook moved to Minnesota two years later to live with her boyfriend. Thanks to Daniels, she’s learning to relax more, take time off to spend at a cabin up north, play in a local volleyball league and dine at restaurants like COV in Wayzata. He convinced her to take this summer off, the first time she’s ever done that.

“He’s been such a good influence on me,” said Cook, who plans to do some joint European dates with Daniels in October, right before a solo stand at Minneapolis’s Acme Comedy Club the following month. “He’s helping me to not feel like I have to be on the grind all the time. I’ve loved it, like dangerously loved it.”

Cook still finds time to fly home every couple months to visit her mom. Brainard is also in her thoughts every time Cook goes on stage and opens up.

“It’s so cathartic,” she said. “It’s the most heartbreaking thing in my life, but if I don’t talk about it, then I’m completely alone.”

But while Cook enjoys the joint appearances with Daniels and wants to develop a sitcom, she’ll always crave the challenge of being on stage on her own, steadily climbing to the top of the stand-up world.

“For better or worse, you’re responsible for what’s going on,” she said. “It’s up to you to decide if you’re going to get better.”

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