-Our next guests are entertainment icons
who have been married for over 40 years.
She's an award-winning actress, author, and activist,
and he is a talk show legend.
New episodes of their podcast "Double Date"
are available Mondays.
Please welcome to the show, Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas.
Thank you both so much for being here.
-Hi, hi. -Hi.
Seth! I've never been up this late.
-Well, I'm very honored to have you.
And you know, I wish I had all my guests in studio,
but Phil, this would have been extra special.
You used to film your show in this studio.
Do you have fond memories of 8G?
-Well, have you noticed my ghost wandering around there?
-Yeah. We've never seen a ghost with such a long mic cord.
-Right. Right. No kidding. That was the early days.
I used to run to the back of the audience
and strangle three people in the front row.
That was before the wireless mic.
-Well, obviously hosting a talk show
paid off as well for you, Phil, specifically with Marlo.
I did not realize you guys have been together for 41 years,
and you met, Marlo, when you were a guest on Phil's show.
-Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of love at first sight.
Or something. Something chemical happened.
He came into the green room and I had not seen his show,
'cause it wasn't in L.A. at the time.
And so he came in,
and it was like one of those shampoo commercials, you know?
The white hair and the blue eyes, the whole Irish thing.
I got very interested in him,
and he looked at me and said -- [ Chuckles ] --
-Well, I thought she was a bad thought, you know?
If you're Catholic, you understand what that means.
-[ Laughing ]
-And one thing led to another and before you know it,
we were a real, live couple.
-But I read that you met your wife
and you fell in love at first sight.
-That is the way I agreed to tell it.
-[ Laughing ] No, but I mean, that's --
-It is true, though.
We met at a wedding and the last thing
I think either of us were looking for was that,
and yet we're together ever since then,
so it is amazing how fortuitous it can be.
-And a lot of people
that we interview for the podcast, that was so.
Billy Crystal was like 18.
He was playing ball on the beach
and this girl in a pink bikini walked by
and he, like, fell in love with her,
and they've been married, like, 60 years.
So that does happen.
-The first vision -- Malcolm Gladwell made this
a part of American culture, really.
The first look at a person is the most important one.
That's when -- well, we found
in the interviews we did with couples for our book,
many of those couples fell in love on the first date,
the first look, the first anything.
-And I was doing his show, so it was kind of bare,
because we'd never met before,
and all of the sudden we were flirting like mad,
and his show was one person for an hour,
and you know, I'm going,
"Oh, Phil. You're so funny, Phil."
It was just really embarrassing, but it happens,
and I'm sure you felt that when you met Alexi.
-I did. I want to ask, because I will say the next day --
you know, we met Friday of a wedding
and the wedding on Saturday --
true stories, people were coming up and asking my wife and I,
who had just met, how long we'd been a couple.
So it was chemistry right away, but I'm wondering --
you guys knew you were flirting,
but friends of yours who watched that TV appearance,
did they recognize it as well?
-Everybody. -Yeah.
-Everybody called me and said, "What was that about?"
I mean, it wasn't my first talk show, right?
I'd been interviewed by
Johnny Carson and all other people.
I'd never fallen for anybody on their show before.
It was just --
and the woman that lived next door to you came over
and she said that to you.
She said, "What did you do today?
-Yeah. Well. You know, "Who was that you had on today?"
So you know, I guess it was obvious.
We didn't think so at the time.
We weren't thinking about that.
-But he called me the next day and then we went out to dinner.
That was it.
-Ta-da. -Ta-da. There you are.
-You guys were pretty private early on.
I mean, for being a couple that had a profile,
you know, each of you were well-known.
You were not very public about your relationship, correct?
-No, we haven't been.
And we made the decision early,
because we got married quietly in my parents' house
and then we took off for our honeymoon.
And so when we got back,
we were being asked to co-host the Emmys together
and co-host, what was it, the People's Choice,
and "People" magazine and it was kind of alarming.
We said to each other, "Let's back off from this,
'cause if we do this, we're putting it out there
like a product, and they'll just take shots at it,
so let's be quiet."
So we did. We kept our marriage out of the limelight.
We didn't do anything together.
But then after being married like, about 39 years,
we thought, "Well, they can't hurt us now.
What are they gonna say?"
-They say, wait 40 years, and if you're still happily married,
do a podcast.
-But it was fun, because there we were
for the first time, talking about our marriage
on these double dates with these other people,
and it was a new experience.
And Phil had said to me when we were starting
to go out around the country to interview the couples,
he said, "I'm not talking about our marriage."
I said, "Okay."
When you're married 40 years, you know what to say, right?
I said, "No problem."
But once we got there, you did, because it was a conversation.
-Yeah, if I said anything about us,
it seemed to blow the doors open.
The other couple would --
I mean, it's like we couldn't get them to stop talking.
I think there's a message there somewhere --
four people are more likely to say things
that are more intimate than two people.
-Than a reporter would get.
A lot of people who interviewed us afterward
from newspapers and magazines and stuff said,
"How did you get them to talk about these things?
I could never have gotten that."
I said, "Well, you're a reporter, and we're not.
We're a couple." -[ Chuckles ] Right.
-So we're sitting down with another couple
over a glass of wine and talking.
It doesn't have that scary feeling
that you're going to be misquoted
and somebody's out to get you.
We didn't have any of that.
-Based on the people you've talked to,
are there any main takeaways?
Any keys that you feel you've discovered
about a healthy relationship?
-I think in many ways,
we discovered things that we should have already known,
but first of all, it takes both.
You can't have one person committed to the relationship
and the other person
like baggage that has to be dragged along.
That wears out the person who's for the union,
and the other one who isn't.
-So all of these long-married couples,
they all had this thing in common,
which is they both really wanted it, whatever it was.
Kyra Sedgwick said there can be no Plan B when you get married.
This is it.
And they go to marriage counseling --
not Kyra Sedgwick, but many of the couples
went to marriage counseling.
-Yeah, I think that is the ultimate, I think, evidence
of a good marriage.
I mean, if people are voluntarily
committed to marriage counseling, that means you really care.
-We've never been to one,
because Mr. Irish here would rather die
than talk about himself.
-He'll go if it's court-appointed,
but he's not going voluntarily.
-Right.
-You guys, thank you so much both for doing the podcast
and for spending time with me today.
I really appreciate it.
-Thank you, Seth.
-Good luck on your marriage. -Thank you.
-New episodes of "Double Date" are available Mondays.