Josephine Keegan was born in Dundee, Scotland in 1935 and moved with her family to Co. Armagh in 1939.  She had already developed a keen ear for music by the time she began playing a small F whistle at the age of 6.  Her first teacher was her father who moved her onto the fiddle, while her mother encouraged her and her sisters to also play piano.  Because she suffered from asthma she was educated at boarding schools,  The Convent of Mercy in Bessbrook and Our Lady’s Grammar School, Newry.  At school she studied classical music on both violin and piano and learned to read and write music.  She trained as a primary school teacher in St Mary’s in Belfast and taught in schools in Northern Ireland, Scotland and England.

She competed successfully at fleadhanna and feiseanna and won many awards and competitions, including gold medals at both the Oireachtas and the Feis Ceoil in 1955.  These in turn led to recording opportunities for Raidió Éireann and BBC and she became well known as a piano accompanist.  She recorded and toured with many of the biggest names in Irish traditional music including Seán Maguire and Joe Burke.  In 1977 she recorded the first of her solo fiddle albums.  On many of the tracks in these albums Josephine accompanies herself on piano using double tracking.  She has also recorded a piano album.  She is a prolific composer of tunes and has published four books in the series ‘The Keegan Tunes’, with a combined total of 387 compositions, many of which have entered the traditional repertoire. In 2003 Josephine received a special award at Boston College in appreciation of her life-long dedication to Irish traditional music and her invaluable contribution to Irish Cultural preservation, and in 2005 she was awarded the TG4 Gradam Ceoil for Cumadóir na Bliana (Composer of the Year).

Josephine celebrated her 90th birthday in May of 2025.