Karen Moeller Obituary

Karen Kay Moeller was born in Downers Grove, Illinois in 1967. In 1971, her mother Judie and her two older siblings, Vicki and Mark, moved to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. Soon after, Judie married Arthur Robert Moeller, a 4th generation Sturgeon Bay native and co-owner of Moeller's Garage at the corner of 3rd and Jefferson.

Karen was a gifted athlete, excelling in golf, bowling and track (hurdling, sprinting, long- and triple-jump). Karen was student assembly vice president, head cheerleader, and valedictorian of the Sturgeon Bay High School Class of 1985.

Karen studied acting at the University of Iowa where she met her future husband. Karen spent her junior year abroad in London, England, studying acting, voice and stage combat from instructors of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. During that year she traveled to Edinburgh, Dublin, Stockholm, Paris and Leningrad in what was then the Soviet Union. She received her bachelors degree in psychology from Hunter College in 1998.

Karen's passion was theatre. She was a commercial actor and model in New York City from 1990 to 2000. Moving back to Wisconsin, she performed with many theatre companies including Forward Theater, the theatre companies of the Bartell Theatre, Peninsula Players, Northern Sky, and Third Avenue Playworks. Non-stage work included voiceovers, radio commercials, the YouTube series Chad Vader, and phone trees where a nice person tells you to "please listen to the whole message because our options have recently changed". She was Artistic Associate for Forward Theater in their first decade, managing projects, providing casting options from her database of Wisconsin actors, and coordinating the judging of scripts for their biannual Monologue Festival. Karen used her acting skill to train many doctors in empathy at the UW Hospital in a long-form improvisation as a patient or loved one experiencing stress. Beautiful and graceful, with a soothing alto voice, she prided herself on her emotional honesty and listening.

Other off-stage occupations included tour guide, internet advice columnist, jewelry-maker, advertising account representative, podcaster, and sensory analyst for Oscar Mayer where she graded lunch meats for sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami on a scale of 1 to 15, while vigilant to detect unwanted flavors such as oxydization or barnyard/zoo.

Other passions included hiking, hosting, history, travel, home renovation, baking cookies, training her standard poodles Butter and Roxie, caring for her father, weightlifting, gift-giving, thank-you notes and birthday cards. She recently conquered her fears by learning how to swim, and became a licensed skydiver with 62 solo jumps. She is renowned for her outdoor Christmas decorations on Fremont Avenue on the north side of Madison, and at the corner of 12th and Utah in Sturgeon Bay.

Creative, intelligent, generous, thoughtful and compassionate, Karen treated all people she met with kindness and respect, from the nervous actor in an audition room to the President of the United States.

Karen was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer in late August 2025, and succumbed on January 16th, 2026 at age 58.

She was preceded in death by her sister Vicki, her mother Judie, and her father Bob Moeller. She is survived by her husband of 27 years, Tony Trout, her brother Mark Moeller and sister-in-law Jennifer Moeller of Sturgeon Bay, her uncle Matt Sisak, and cousins Judy, Jeff and Peter Sisak of Racine, Wisconsin.

Memorial donations can be sent to either the Door County Land Trust, the Door County Historical Society, or Forward Theater of Madison.

There will be a memorial gathering Saturday, May 9th from 1 to 4 p.m. at Third Avenue Playworks (TAP), 239 N 3rd Ave, Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235. Forbes Funeral Home is serving the family.