8 minute read
What Makes a Marriage Last?
Kim Carson’s interview with Marlo Thomas & Phil Donahue
Award-winning actress, author and activist, Marlo Thomas and her husband, writer/ producer and media pioneer, Phil Donahue, marked their 40th wedding anniversary with the release of their book, “What Makes a Marriage Last: 40 Celebrated Couples Share With Us the Secrets to a Happy Life.”
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Phil Donahue: And lose jealousy, that helped me a lot. Jealousy is a very heavy burden on the person who thinks that when he’s away, there’s a tall, dark stranger hiding behind the drapes. That will crush you. It takes away all of your energy.
Kim Carson: It’s exhausting.
Marlo Thomas: It is.
PD: Very much so.
MT: It’s hard on both people. I think the biggest sense of trust, for me, is the fact that I know Phil has my back and that if I ask him for advice, he’s going to give me the advice that’s best for me, not the advice that’s most convenient for him. I know a lot of my women friends who are no longer married to those husbands who said that was something that broke their hearts when they realized that their husbands weren’t advising them for what was best for them but what was the most convenient to the husband.
KC: Yes. Agendas in a marriage are never a good thing.
MT: Yes, it really is.
KC: My parents, they were married for 74 years until my dad died in 2019, but for the other couples that you interviewed in your book, what did they say about their parents’ marriages?
MT: That’s interesting. That fascinated
Phil and what – do you want to talk about that, honey?
PD: Well, yes, I did. I asked them and it’s definitely consequential to the offspring.
If your parents remained married and in reasonably good emotional condition, that has a huge influence on you. People who come from families that have remained and where the father still patting the mother on the ass that’s helpful. I mean that will - bode well for you. You have a better chance of forming a union that lasts.
MT: But Ali Wentworth who is married to
George Stephanopoulos, her parents got divorced when she was two. She knew what she didn’t want in a marriage, so it can work that way for you as well, that you know what you don’t want. So, I think…
KC: By the way, Phil, even at the age of 92 my dad was still patting my mom on the butt.
MT: Isn’t that sweet? That’s so nice.
KC: Now, let me ask you about Sting and
Trudie Styler because they kind of had a magical connection, didn’t they?
MT: They really do. They’re both very electrifying people. It was interesting
sitting with them in their very modern beautiful apartment. They have electrifying personalities and you can see the sort of sexual charge between them. They’re really alive. All through the interview, remember he was taking a piece of lint off of her sweater and rubbing her shoulder. He was very much kind of delighted by her. It was lovely to see. We enjoyed them a lot. They really had a tough beginning. I mean, he was married to another woman and had two children. She lived nearby, I think next door or something with Peter O’Toole. The two of them fell in love and that was very difficult. That broke up that marriage and then they lived together and had three children for 10 years until they got married themselves. So, it was a very difficult beginning.
KC: Phil, I remember when you were doing your talk show and it inspired me to love learning about people and doing interviews, and just learning about other people’s life stories but I remember something you said - I don’t remember the context but it was something to the effect of, “I pray that you may live to be 100 years and I, one day less that I may never know the day you passed.”
Do you remember that?
PD: I don’t but that’s a lovely thought. KC: Yes. I think it was some sort of Irish saying that you referred to. Now, you also talk about “kicking the can down the road” when it comes to arguments. What does that mean?
PD: Well, that’s James
Carville’s comment to us. It means make sure you don’t go round and round on an issue that isn’t that important.
MT: Which we all do, around and around when it’s not resolvable and at some point, he says to Mary…
PD: “Kick that can down the road.” As cliché as that is, it really is packed with good advice.
MT: Yes. Well, we’re using it. Marlo Thomas starring on the sitcom That Girl from 1965-1971
PD: Yes, we do.
Marlo on The Phil Donahue Show.
MT: Yes. Phil started it. After we’d interviewed with them and one day we were going around and around on one of our [useless] disagreements and at one point he said to me, “Oh, let’s just kick this can down the road.” When he said it, we started laughing and thought, “Boy, what an important new tool we have.” It just goes on and on. People would stay up all night picking at this fight. Melissa McCarthy’s husband, Ben Falcone, said, “I intentionally go to bed pissed because I know in the morning it’ll be gone anyway.” It’s absolutely true.
KC: I love that. did any of the couples talk about maybe – even you – when you realized this was the one, this is the person that I could spend the rest of my life with? MT: We all talked about that at different times. I mean, some people fell in love at first sight. Billy Crystal saw this girl across the beach and said to himself,
“I’m going to marry her.” Jamie Lee Curtis saw Chris Guest’s picture on a cover of a magazine with three other guys and said, “Oh,
I’m going to marry him.” A lot of people did feel a connection. We did when I went on your show.
PD: Right. Yes.
KC: I remember that!
PD: Well, first of all, she was an impure thought.
MT: As they say in the Catholic religion.
PD: You have to be Catholic to understand that.
KC: Oh, I got it.
MT: I think she gets it.
PD: Renee Taylor and Joe Bologna were guests on the show and both sitting very close, side by side, on the edge of the stage and a person in the back row stood and said, “Renee, how did you know?” Renee said, “Well, I thought about it and I finally
came to the conclusion. I’m not going to do any better than this.” I mean, he’s sitting right there.
KC: Yes.
MT: Well, she was a comedian.
PD: Yes. Humor helps, I’m telling you.
It gets you through a lot.
MT: I think when we met on the Donahue
Show, it was like a chemical reaction that we each had. I mean he calls it, “It was lust.” Well, I [don’t] mean that lust is a good way to start. We certainly had that.
We thought alike, we found out in that hour that we had a lot in common the way we thought about the world and politics, and having both been raised Catholic and so forth. We had this sexual charge which certainly helped and we started dating and it was apparent. I mean, he was definitely from my tribe. I understood who he was and he understood who I was. I think a lot of the couples felt it right away. I know Ali Wentworth and George Stephanopoulos did. Mariska Hargitay and Peter Hermann did. A lot of people, they felt it. They didn’t jump into marriage but they knew. They knew this was the one.
Phil and Marlo on their wedding day in 1980, left, and now, right.
Kim Carson
Kim is an Author/Podcast/ TV/Internet personality. Watch and listen for her on WGVU TV’s Kalamazoo Lively Arts and J. Schwanke’s Life In Bloom. Learn more at kimcarson.online and fb.com/kimcarson
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