Mary Magdalene Blake was born in 1935 in Meyer, Iowa. Blake was the first of her siblings to attend high school: she first attended the Stacyville Visitation School, then the Immaculate Conception Academy in Dubuque, Iowa, to be become a nun. After joining the order of Franciscans, she took on her first teaching job at Sacred Heart School in Sioux City while taking summer classes at Briarcliff College. After earning a BA degree in Elementary Education with a minor in Social Sciences in 1969, Blake left the convent and began her teaching career. In 1978, Blake took up a teaching position at the Visitation School in Stacyville. She retired from teaching in 1994. Blake went on to found a number of restaurants and businesses in Stacyville with fellow former Visitation School teacher and nun Jacquelyn Scheneman. Blake also taught GED night classes at Northern Iowa Community College from 1984 to 1994. In 2000, Blake began her work on opening the Stacyville Memory Museum in the back room of her pizza restaurant. In 2005, the museum moved to its current home at the Visitation School. Additionally, Blake was the Stacyville representative for the Mitchell County Historical Preservation Committee. She was also a reporter for The Monitor Review from 1996 to 2006.