Violet was born on May 18, 1907 at 91 Nicollet Street, a small house on Nicollet Island near downtown Minneapolis. She was the first of three daughters born to John and Louise Newman Mathews, along with seven sons, two who were older than Violet. During her youth, her family moved frequently around near northeast and south Minneapolis, finally settling in their own home at 2213-16th Avenue South. Violet attended Adams school and South High, graduating in 1925. During her growing up years, she also spent lots of time in Menomonie, Wisconsin, where she had friends and many cousins on her mother's side.

After graduation, Vi worked for the telephone company. In the evenings, she would go dancing at one of the many small ballrooms found in Minneapolis at the time. On August 19, 1927, she married her favorite dancing partner, Leon Grant, probably in Menomonie. It was an off and on marriage, probably because dancing was all they had in common. Around 1935, they divorced, and Vi went to work with her sister Muriel at the 620 Club in downtown Minneapolis as a waitress. The 620 Club was "the" nightspot of Minneapolis in the 30's.

In 1939, look she met and married Ray Smith, in a whirlwind romance. They were married on July 21, 1939 in Northwood, Worth, Iowa. Violet had one child, a son who was named Kenneth, after Ray's brother who was killed in an automobile accident in 1935. In the summer after Ken was born, Vi, Ray and Ken went on one last billboard painting trip to the Dakotas. Many years later, Vi loved to tell how they would arrive at a small town, having little money. Ray would get out his lettering kit and walk down Main Street. He would paint a window at a restaurant in exchange for dinner, and a new sign for the hotel for a place to stay the night. They spent Ken's first birthday at Greenwood Lodge, a resort owned by Ray's parents.

After the marriage, Vi and Ray lived in an apartment near Loring Park, on Willow. The next summer, they rented a cottage on Lake Independence. In 1942, Vi and Ray bought a home at 3825 Standish in Minneapolis, the only home they ever owned. During WWII, Ray went to Alaska to work on the AlCan Highway. After Ken's birth, Vi never worked outside the home again. She had a large circle of friends, and loved to go out to lunch with her girlfriends. Vi and Ray also had an active social life, dining out frequently, attending dances and dinners sponsored by the local Shrine Temple to which Ray belonged, and spending lots of time with family and friends. Vi and Ray also travelled extensively, by auto, during the 1950's. They went west to visit Ray's daughter, Marlene in Portland and some of Vi's relatives in Los Angeles, south to visit friends in Florida and Georgia, and also to West Virginia, visiting Ray's relatives there.

Vi was a closet poet all her life, but not too many people outside her family knew it. She wrote especially moving tributes to her parents and other siblings after their deaths. After Ray retired, they moved out of their home to an apartment at 3255 Holmes Avenue. After Ray died in 1976, Vi found the apartment too difficult to care for. She moved into a senior citizen's high rise close to her old family home, on 22nd and 16th Ave. She spent the better part of ten years there before a series of falls forced her to move into a rest home in Richfield. She was very popular in the home, and had a regular poetry column in the home's newsletter.

Vi adored all her grandchildren. Her room was filled with pictures of all eight of them, and nothing made her happier than when any of them came to visit. The older kids all remember Vi as a great babysitter. Her specialty was to make up stories with the kids as characters in the tale. As Violet got into her upper eighties, she grew weaker. In the spring of 1993, she was hospitalized several times, and passed away peacefully on May 4th. Her ashes are buried with Ray at Sunset Memorial Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota. There is no headstone there for Violet.