Mr. Economic Forecast hanging up his hat

Kelly K. Matthews is the ultimate "suit," moving easily through the corporate crowd and mixing with politicians, lobbyists and financiers.

Say his name and most Utahns know him for his economic forecasts on behalf of Wells Fargo. He projects what's coming, explains what just happened, shows how job losses and gas prices and inflation and housing starts all influence the economic well-being of a community.

This Thanksgiving, the "suit" is going to hang it up, retiring after a 36-year run. He figures he's given at least 7,600 talks on the economy to civic, education and business groups. And that doesn't count monthly press briefings about the Wasatch Front consumer price index or the hours he's spent traveling to Washington, D.C., or New York for business. He's served on councils, taught classes, won awards.

He laughs when asked if he minds being described as a "suit." He says he'll claim the title gladly, as long as it's also noted that he's a cowboy, in the literal sense, and equally proud of it — as comfortable on a horse as in his ergonomic swivel chair. He collects cowboy hats and baseball caps, belt buckles and all things related to BYU sports or the Utah Jazz. His Mormon library is extensive. He has a large gun collection, though he has no urge to "hunt and eat." Aggressive exercise is among his daily activities, although he says he doesn't ski or golf.

His favorite place to shop is Deseret Industries, and when he's not on the lunchtime banquet circuit, Matthews would just as soon have a hot dog from the corner trolley outside his downtown office. He loves a good ice cream cone.

You can trace those interests and tastes back to his childhood in Bear Lake, Idaho, he says, where he grew up on a sheep and dairy ranch and where life was about athletics, academics and animals. He loved them all then and he loves them still. The youngest of five kids, his "idyllic" childhood included playing football and baseball. When he graduated (his high school class had 25 students), he headed off to BYU for both his bachelor's and master's degrees, with a two-year interruption to serve an LDS mission in the northern portion of Ireland.

It was mid-education, just back from the mission in 1965, that he married. He and Mary Lynn have three grown children — Maria, Bradford and Teresa — and 10 grandkids on whom he dotes.