Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas’ Top 3 Secrets To A Good Marriage

Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas had been married for 44 years, and she or he was by his facet when the discuss present host died at residence on Sunday, Aug. 18, at age 88.

“I misplaced my sweetheart final night time,” Thomas wrote on Fb on Monday, calling Donahue her “beloved Phillip.” She included certainly one of her favourite pictures of the couple taken once they had been youthful and on trip.

The couple famously fell in love on dwell tv.

“It was type of love at first sight,” Thomas recalled on “Late Night time with Seth Meyers” in 2021. “One thing chemical occurred.”

They initially saved their marriage out of the limelight, however grew to become extra public about it and their relationship recommendation in recent times, even internet hosting a podcast about marriage success in 2021 titled, “Double Date with Marlo Thomas & Phil Donahue.”

How did Phil Donahue meet Marlo Thomas?

The couple clicked when she was a visitor on his discuss present in 1977.

It was really the second time they met, Donahue recalled within the couple’s 2020 e-book, “What Makes a Marriage Final: 40 Celebrated {Couples} Share with Us the Secrets and techniques to a Completely happy Life.”

The primary time was in 1972 when Thomas was selling a TV particular and got here to Dayton, Ohio, the place his present was primarily based on the time. She was an actor, writer and social activist finest recognized for the TV collection “That Woman” and her kids’s e-book collection, “Free To Be…You & Me.”

Donahue discovered her lovely, vibrant and “the proper visitor,” he wrote, however her look wasn’t as memorable as the subsequent time they met.

5 years later, Thomas was again on his present, this time on the Chicago studio. Donahue was just lately divorced. She was single.

A clip from “Donahue” posted on Thomas’ YouTube web page reveals the couple exchanging smiles and heat glances as they discuss. “Immediate chemistry!” Thomas wrote within the caption. “We had been flirting like mad,” she instructed Meyers.

“You might be actually fascinating,” Donahue instructed her, taking her hand.

“You might be fantastic,” Thomas responded, putting her different hand on his. “You might be loving and beneficiant, and you want ladies and it’s a pleasure. Whoever is the girl in your life could be very fortunate.”

That they had dinner afterward, and he instructed her he doubted he’d ever marry once more. She favored his mindset as a result of she wasn’t trying to get married both, Thomas wrote in AARP journal. “I used to be the lady who by no means needed any a part of it,” she wrote of their e-book.

Love blossomed as a result of they didn’t really feel the strain to say, “I do.”

“Had Phil and I been youthful, we’d have been extra impatient and missed one another. However being older — me in my late 30s, Phil in his early 40s — we trusted our hearts and made the trouble,” she wrote.

“For a lot of, love actually is healthier the second time round, however for me, the primary time has been simply high-quality.”

After long-distance relationship — he lived in Chicago, she in Los Angeles — the couple married in 1980.

What’s the age distinction between Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas?

There was a two-year age distinction. Phil Donahue was born in December 1935 and Marlo Thomas was born in November 1937.

Did Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas have any kids?

No. Donahue had 5 kids from a earlier marriage: 4 sons, Michael, Kevin, Daniel and James; and one daughter, Mary Rose.

Thomas grew to become stepmom to his children, writing that she determined to be their good friend fairly than a mother within the conventional sense.

Their secrets and techniques to marriage success

Thomas mentioned the key to maintaining their lengthy marriage sturdy might be summed up by “the three L’s: Love, listening and lust,” she instructed Individuals in 2023.

“You need to pay attention and then you definately’ll know what the opposite particular person is absolutely considering and going via. You need to love one another. And with out lust, you don’t have something,” she defined.

In 2015, Thomas instructed TODAY that she and Donahue didn’t critique one another’s tasks — one other secret to their long-lasting relationship.

“The key of excellent communication: Screaming helps,” Donahue joked in an interview with AARP. “A minimum of you get to know whether or not the particular person you are screaming at is listening. Then go within the different room and rely to 10.”

Via the years, you study that the whole lot shouldn’t be that huge of a deal, Thomas added.

In 2020, the couple wrote their e-book, “What Makes a Marriage Final.” It was the primary time they labored on a shared venture, breaking an “ironclad rule of our marriage” to not work collectively, they wrote in AARP journal.

It occurred after Donahue and Thomas had been shaken when a good friend instructed them she was divorcing her husband of 28 years.

“The place did they go fallacious, we puzzled, and extra to the purpose, the place did we go proper?” the couple wrote.

Their e-book featured recommendation from well-known {couples} who had been married 15 years or extra, together with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, and Joanna and Chip Gaines.

Donahue and Thomas additionally interviewed TODAY’s Al Roker and his spouse, Deborah Roberts, for the e-book. The couple’s connection was clear, he mentioned.

“He adored her,” Al recalled throughout a section that aired on Aug. 20.

The teachings from the e-book: Gratitude, belief, humor and occasional remedy are among the many keys to long-term marriage success, Donahue and Thomas discovered.

You need to need the wedding to final, Donahue instructed TODAY with Hoda & Jenna. Lodging — not compromise or making an attempt to vary any individual — is a very powerful factor in a wedding, Thomas added. Take a look at your partner, understand who they’re and allow them to be, she suggested.

“Our greatest lesson is: there is no such thing as a one secret to a long-lasting marriage, there are one million secrets and techniques,” the couple wrote on the finish of the e-book.

“So preserve in search of them. As a result of the longer you look, the extra you’ll uncover causes to remain in it.”