Speaker 1: Pushing Hey, double date listeners, Marlow Thomas, here, we have
Speaker 1: something special for you today. Phil and I have spent
Speaker 1: the pasture interviewing other couples about what makes their marriage work. Well,
Speaker 1: we recently had the microphone turned on us. Joe Piazza
Speaker 1: of the Committed podcast had us on to tell our
Speaker 1: own love story, and we wanted to share that episode
Speaker 1: with you. We started at the very beginning on the
Speaker 1: set of Phil's show and talked about how we grew
Speaker 1: together over the next four decades. Joe's Committed interviews are
Speaker 1: an incredible glimpse inside what it takes to make a
Speaker 1: marriage work. Sometimes they're heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, but always relatable.
Speaker 1: Joe finds couples who've gone through some of the most
Speaker 1: difficult challenges life can throw at you and still want
Speaker 1: to wake up together the next day. Her show will
Speaker 1: help you look at marriage and commitment in an entirely
Speaker 1: new way. So okay, here's the episode. Committed is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. Marlow Thomas is back. It's been a
Speaker 1: couple of years since she last visited with us. You
Speaker 1: are so thin, am I thinner than I think last time?
Speaker 1: You've never been fat no, no, I eat a lot
Speaker 1: of food to try to gain weight. Excellent. You want
Speaker 1: me to move out, I'm in the way. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: I'm upstaging you. Doctor. Just love the Smooth Show. A
Speaker 1: clip right there is the moment that Phil Donnie Hue
Speaker 1: fell in love with marlow Thomas. That moment right on
Speaker 1: his show in nineteen seventy seven on a sound stage
Speaker 1: in Chicago. I'm sorry that we are out of time.
Speaker 1: You are really fascinating now. You are wonderful, I said
Speaker 1: when we were off there. And I want to say
Speaker 1: you are loving and generous, and you like women and
Speaker 1: it's a pleasure. And whoever is the woman in your
Speaker 1: life is very lucky. How many of us have a
Speaker 1: video of the moment that we first fell in love.
Speaker 1: Actually have a picture of me on a plane right
Speaker 1: when I first saw Nick right that moment, which is
Speaker 1: pretty special. I love this video. Their chemistry is insane
Speaker 1: and undeniable. Phil is a little stumbly and so obviously smitten.
Speaker 1: Marlowe is just so composed and insanely beautiful. You could
Speaker 1: watch this clip and not know anything about what happens
Speaker 1: next and still knowing your soul that these two people
Speaker 1: end up together for the next forty years. So I
Speaker 1: wasn't prepared because I had never seen his show because
Speaker 1: it wasn't in La So when he walked into the
Speaker 1: green room with those killer blue eyes and that great
Speaker 1: white hair, and he shook my hand and I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: what a good looking man. And then we got out
Speaker 1: in the studio and he was so confident and just
Speaker 1: to watch him work the audience, and I was very
Speaker 1: attracted to him. I mean, we had a chemical reaction
Speaker 1: to each other right right there. You could see it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's embarrassing to look at that show because
Speaker 1: you can really see it. And I think the most
Speaker 1: important thing is really in a marriage is that it
Speaker 1: starts off like that and that gets rekindled all the time,
Speaker 1: so that there is that sort of not just sexual
Speaker 1: but also attachment. There's a magnet between you that's you
Speaker 1: don't have with anybody else. It certainly was true with
Speaker 1: me and Marlowe. People just they do have that reaction
Speaker 1: to each other, not always but often. And I think
Speaker 1: when you start off that way, it's so exciting and
Speaker 1: well it's risky. Yeah, it's true. You know, half half
Speaker 1: of us get divorced, half of us, so you know,
Speaker 1: you and me babe forever. Yeah, that's that's a musical,
Speaker 1: kind of lyrical ideas. It doesn't consist with reality. And
Speaker 1: that's why making a marriage last can be such a
Speaker 1: challenging thing. It's just isn't easy. Marriage isn't just a struggle.
Speaker 1: It's a struggle every now and then. But again it's
Speaker 1: it's braided, you know, you braid it with love and
Speaker 1: joy and struggle and sadness and happiness and fun and humor,
Speaker 1: and then another sad thing happens. That's life. It's going
Speaker 1: to happen whether you're with this person or not. It's
Speaker 1: just whether this person is the one that is worth
Speaker 1: going through life with and allowing each other to be
Speaker 1: as vulnerable as you want to be. There is no
Speaker 1: such thing as a marriage that is smooth sailing from
Speaker 1: beginning to end. No, it just doesn't happen. You know,
Speaker 1: that's pretty obvious to all of us older folks, right,
Speaker 1: But I don't know if it's totally something that young
Speaker 1: people are aware of. Joe Pianza and this is committed.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Season six Guys Last Month. After more than
Speaker 1: forty years of marriage, Bill Donna Hue and Marlo Thomas
Speaker 1: launched a podcast together, a podcast about long term love.
Speaker 1: It's a show that a lot of our listeners are
Speaker 1: going to be very very into. It's called Double Date,
Speaker 1: and on it they interview longtime celebrity couples to find
Speaker 1: out what really makes a marriage work. We wanted to
Speaker 1: know what makes a marriage last. So in order to
Speaker 1: find out what makes the marriage last, you've got to
Speaker 1: have people who've had some experience being married and who'd
Speaker 1: been through things. You know, somebody had been unfaithful. Kia
Speaker 1: Cedric and Kevin Bacon lost all their money to Bernie Madoff.
Speaker 1: Imagine that Michael J. Fox found out he had a
Speaker 1: lifelong diagnosis of Parkinson's Three years into their marriage. Jamie
Speaker 1: Lee Curtis was addicted to pharmaceutical drugs and her husband
Speaker 1: didn't even know it. I mean, people went through these
Speaker 1: terrible things, but they knew that they loved each other
Speaker 1: and they were going to help them through it without blame,
Speaker 1: without you know, anger, but to get to the other side.
Speaker 1: And somebody, and I said, I think it was Tracy
Speaker 1: Pollin's married to Michael J. Fox. She said, when you
Speaker 1: have a long marriage, you get through something hard and
Speaker 1: there's kind of a relief in it. You think, well, wow,
Speaker 1: we got through that, we'll get through the next thing.
Speaker 1: So I love their podcast. What I needed to know
Speaker 1: was more about Phil and Marlow. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: how they made a marriage work for forty years, what
Speaker 1: makes them tick, how they made it, how they blended
Speaker 1: a family together of Phil's four boys, and how they
Speaker 1: made long distance love work between Chicago and Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: So I took us back to that very first moment
Speaker 1: on phil stage. It's nineteen seventy seven. Marlow's sitting next
Speaker 1: to Phil. She was on a nationwide tour promoting one
Speaker 1: of her many projects, and Phil is saying mostly all
Speaker 1: the right things, except for that line about how she
Speaker 1: looks so thin. I don't know if anyone would be
Speaker 1: able to say that today, But when he says it,
Speaker 1: he's just gazing adoringly at her. Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: was certainly attracted to her. I mean, if you're Catholic,
Speaker 1: you'll understand that she was an impure thought. And I
Speaker 1: did call you, yeah, and I said I knew you
Speaker 1: were on a tour, and I said, what is your
Speaker 1: next city? Right? And you said it's is Denver? And you,
Speaker 1: and you said is I said, it is Denver, very
Speaker 1: far from Chicago, and he goes, oh, no, it's not
Speaker 1: far at all. So he came for dinner, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I flew to Denver and we had dinner, and yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much fell in love. Yeah, that was the beginning
Speaker 1: of it. And I'd love to hear Phil try to
Speaker 1: get through this without being too mushy. By the way,
Speaker 1: I think I had a cold, did I not? From
Speaker 1: you did? Because you we walked in the rain and
Speaker 1: you took your coat off and then you lost your
Speaker 1: voice and I did. This was a huge deal. Bill Donnie,
Speaker 1: who had the biggest talk show in America at the time.
Speaker 1: He needed to talk who was this woman? Who was
Speaker 1: this woman at Stollfel's voice? He had no voice, and
Speaker 1: his producer was thinking, who is this woman that gets filter?
Speaker 1: Leave Chicago? Gettical as a show, but it was it
Speaker 1: was a We were certainly smitten at first sight. Phil
Speaker 1: was I guess forty when I met you, and I
Speaker 1: was thirty eight when I met you. We were already
Speaker 1: grown people who'd had careers and other relationships, and and
Speaker 1: you had children. I did not have a marriage, but
Speaker 1: he'd had a marriage and children. But we'd had other
Speaker 1: lives and we come to each other with a lot
Speaker 1: of experience that should be appreciated. In our differences are accomplishments.
Speaker 1: Phil was always the first person to tell me how
Speaker 1: proud he was of what I was accomplishing or what
Speaker 1: I had already accomplished. I mean, that's a great that's
Speaker 1: a great gift that your partner gives you that kind
Speaker 1: of cheerleading. Boy, that's very big, I think in a marriage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as a parent, I wish I had learned that much earlier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the biggest challenge early years was geography. Phil's entire life
Speaker 1: was in Chicago and Marlowe's entire life was in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: It was a time in my career where I was
Speaker 1: making a television movie after television movie. I produced and
Speaker 1: starred in about twelve films all in a row, and
Speaker 1: Free to Be was one of the projects at that time.
Speaker 1: It happened one Christmas. I mean, there were so many
Speaker 1: of them, and Phil was doing a show every day
Speaker 1: at nine am, live in Chicago, and four boys, raising
Speaker 1: four boys. So I mean the traveling was just crazy
Speaker 1: and upsetting, and we'd always have an argument on Sunday night,
Speaker 1: one of us would be going back home. And it
Speaker 1: took us a while to realize that the reason we
Speaker 1: fought on Sunday nights is that we were unhappy that
Speaker 1: we were leaving each other. I think geography was the
Speaker 1: biggest problem. And we broke up for three months, obviously
Speaker 1: before we were married, and said this too much. FEEL said,
Speaker 1: I've got these kids, I've got to get them through
Speaker 1: high school. I've got my show. And I said, I,
Speaker 1: you know, I can't come every weekend. I've got responsibilities,
Speaker 1: I've got music scoring, I've script to write. You know,
Speaker 1: I just can't do so it was just impossible. So
Speaker 1: we broke up. And after we broke up, I went
Speaker 1: back to an old boyfriend, and I think he went
Speaker 1: back to an old girlfriend or some new girlfriends whatever
Speaker 1: for about three months. And after the three months, we
Speaker 1: both realize that we needed each other. I often say
Speaker 1: to people when they're concerned about whether or not they
Speaker 1: want to get married to a certain person, I say,
Speaker 1: you know, separate for a couple of months. It really
Speaker 1: gives you a good perspective, It really does. I would
Speaker 1: be out to dinner with another man and I'd be thinking,
Speaker 1: you know Phil would love this or that with that,
Speaker 1: I would be He was on my mind all the time.
Speaker 1: Marlowe never wanted to be married. In fact, when she
Speaker 1: was starring in and producing the sitcom That Girl, a
Speaker 1: show about a single woman living on her own, the
Speaker 1: network producers wanted to end the series with a wedding,
Speaker 1: Marla refused. She didn't even want to get married on TV.
Speaker 1: She did not want to give the impression that the
Speaker 1: only happy ending for a woman was marriage. She was
Speaker 1: also terrified of getting married because she'd never really seen
Speaker 1: a happy and equal marriage in her own family. My
Speaker 1: father was one of ten nine Lebanese boys who were
Speaker 1: not abusive to their eyes, but very dominating, and my
Speaker 1: mother was one of five Italians, four girls and a boy,
Speaker 1: and all of them were involved with dominating men and
Speaker 1: my parents. My mother gave up her career, my father
Speaker 1: ran the world. I just didn't want to live that way.
Speaker 1: I thought, nah, that's not for me. And I had
Speaker 1: wonderful relationships with men in my life, but I just
Speaker 1: didn't want to be married. I just that I want
Speaker 1: a career, I want to be free, I want to
Speaker 1: do what I want to do. I don't want anybody
Speaker 1: telling me when I have to come home, I can't
Speaker 1: do this, or my mother's friends would say things like,
Speaker 1: well he lets me do this, or he'll let me
Speaker 1: have that. I just wasn't raised to want that. And
Speaker 1: then I met Phil, and we've been going together about
Speaker 1: six or seven months, and he asked me to marry him,
Speaker 1: and I said, no, I really don't ever want to
Speaker 1: be married. And so we kept together, going together, and
Speaker 1: then about three years went by, and then one day
Speaker 1: I said, you know, maybe I do want to be married.
Speaker 1: She took three years, and you were very patient. Well
Speaker 1: that time you were busy raising your kids and you
Speaker 1: had your show. So we're busy working and stuff. But
Speaker 1: we were always together. Marlowe moved in with Phil and
Speaker 1: his four boys into their house. And Whennetka, Illinois, I
Speaker 1: was a little naive, you know. I thought, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: in love with this man. And by the way, he
Speaker 1: has four sons. I married a family. I didn't marry
Speaker 1: a man. I married a family. At first, I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not their parent. Fills their parent, and he'll tell him,
Speaker 1: you know, discipline them and teach them and so forth.
Speaker 1: It wasn't It took a while for me to realize
Speaker 1: that I really had to be a part of the
Speaker 1: decision making entity. I couldn't pretend that I was a bystander.
Speaker 1: I wasn't. It was a family, and I helped bring
Speaker 1: it back to being a family because their parents had
Speaker 1: been divorced for a while. When I met Phil. The
Speaker 1: boys are like boys, you know. They took their dinner
Speaker 1: and one would eat it in their baredom, and one
Speaker 1: would eat it in the living and watching television, and
Speaker 1: one would eat it over there whatever there. And I said,
Speaker 1: come on, now, let's have a dinner time. And we'd
Speaker 1: sit down at the table, all of us. And Phil
Speaker 1: said he got to know his kids better because at
Speaker 1: the dinner table they had a real family conversation. When
Speaker 1: I had them all by myself, I mean I was
Speaker 1: really I was scared. I didn't know what to do
Speaker 1: with them. I mean, do I help them all with homework?
Speaker 1: I mean four And I have to say I was
Speaker 1: very impatient. I I went off. I mean i'd have well,
Speaker 1: what the kids called a spaz. That's two z's, you know.
Speaker 1: A spaz was something that bothered me or man, I
Speaker 1: went up. I remember one time I passed Michael who
Speaker 1: was on the phone, and he was saying to his friend,
Speaker 1: let me call you back. My dad is having a spaz.
Speaker 1: And when Marlow came, who was it, Michael? I think
Speaker 1: it was. Michael said to her, we like it when
Speaker 1: you're here because dad doesn't have as many spazes when
Speaker 1: you're here. So, you know, Marlow was a big hit
Speaker 1: with my kids. Well, I brought you know what wasn't
Speaker 1: in the house, the female energy, a mother energy. And
Speaker 1: they were good boys though they really were. They were
Speaker 1: like Phil you know. They were all loved athlete headaches.
Speaker 1: They liked to laugh, they were fun, they liked to ski,
Speaker 1: they liked to play. It was fun for me and
Speaker 1: they knew me from Free to be You and Me,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't a complete stranger to them. And they
Speaker 1: knew I made their father happy. And I think, isn't
Speaker 1: that what everybody wants? You know, they want their parents
Speaker 1: to be happy, and I wanted them to be happy.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be something good in their lives. Marlow
Speaker 1: told me this story about how she became the godmother
Speaker 1: to her stepson Michael's children. Their baby was supposed to
Speaker 1: be born around Christmas time, and Michael and his wife
Speaker 1: called Marlowe and said, hey, we need to talk to
Speaker 1: you about something. We don't want you to be the
Speaker 1: step anything to this baby. We want you to be
Speaker 1: this baby's godmother. And that meant so much to me
Speaker 1: that they had really appreciated my caring and my love
Speaker 1: of them and their dad, because you know, being a
Speaker 1: stepparent can be a very thankless job. You know you're
Speaker 1: on eggshows. You don't want to upset anything, and you
Speaker 1: don't want to take liberties where you shouldn't. I know
Speaker 1: Mary Steinberg and said she has two children of her own,
Speaker 1: and she married Ted Danson with his own to two daughters,
Speaker 1: and she said, I just wanted to be a cheerleader
Speaker 1: for them. So everybody has their way with us. It
Speaker 1: was different because I moved into the house and the
Speaker 1: four boys were there, but it was a good experience
Speaker 1: for me. So Phil and Marlowe had been merging their
Speaker 1: lives together, but after years of living between la and Illinois,
Speaker 1: they ultimately decided to give up their respective cities and
Speaker 1: make a higherly new life together in New York and
Speaker 1: we would start a new life. We gave up where
Speaker 1: we were, gave up our own homes and decided to
Speaker 1: make a life. It was a real commitment. But it's
Speaker 1: not so much that you can't live without somebody, is
Speaker 1: that you just want to live with them. And nobody
Speaker 1: can be somebody's everything. Right, that's some musical lyric. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're my everything. No, no, don't get into that, because
Speaker 1: it's not possible for somebody to be somebody's everything. Well,
Speaker 1: and you don't have what's the word of a contract
Speaker 1: for somebody, as I said, to become you or for
Speaker 1: you to become them. The excitement of a good marriage,
Speaker 1: I think, is not that one and one equals two,
Speaker 1: but it equals two thousand. We find all the parts
Speaker 1: of yourself that are can be nurtured by this other person.
Speaker 1: That's the exciting part. I think marriages go stale when
Speaker 1: there's not enough We call it juiciness, but I think
Speaker 1: there's just not enough interest in a lot of things.
Speaker 1: When we first started going together, you said to me,
Speaker 1: I've never been with a woman who has so much
Speaker 1: interest in so many other things. Other than that's what
Speaker 1: you said. I'm sure I did, and I thought that
Speaker 1: was adorable thing to say. You know that, he was
Speaker 1: really saying, I see this, You aren't going to be
Speaker 1: completely focused on me, and I like it. You know,
Speaker 1: that's was an interesting I realized I was not her
Speaker 1: everything and it was helpful. I mean, you know, it
Speaker 1: makes it easier to get through the reality of life. Well,
Speaker 1: but now you are now you are pretty watched by everything.
Speaker 1: But I think it happens. It happens year by year
Speaker 1: by year by year. But doesn't you know, It's not
Speaker 1: something you give over to somebody. It's something that grows
Speaker 1: and grows until you know it's braided. You know, like
Speaker 1: you see a tree where the two barks are braided.
Speaker 1: That happens naturally. It's not something you can and promise
Speaker 1: to somebody or make them give to you. It's just
Speaker 1: something that starts to happen. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: Phil said earlier that half of marriages end in divorce.
Speaker 1: I think they end in divorce because they're never really
Speaker 1: taking the time. They didn't try. Time, they didn't try,
Speaker 1: but time. We have a ritual when every year on
Speaker 1: our anniversary from our very first year, we don't buy
Speaker 1: each other a present, We buy a trip that we
Speaker 1: take together. In the early years, it was difficult to
Speaker 1: find the time I was working in La he was
Speaker 1: working in Chicago and had children and four boys that
Speaker 1: lived with him. It was very, very hard to find
Speaker 1: the time, but we always did it. We'd get two
Speaker 1: weeks or ten days or one week, whatever we could get,
Speaker 1: and we'd go to Japan, or we'd go to Indonesia
Speaker 1: or upstate Washington, wherever we could get the time. But
Speaker 1: time is what we gave each other. It's the most
Speaker 1: precious thing that you can give each other. And people
Speaker 1: do date nights and stuff, they kind of squeeze them in.
Speaker 1: But we took this big chunk of time and gave
Speaker 1: it to each other, and in that time where there's
Speaker 1: nothing there at that time. There was cell phones in
Speaker 1: many of those years, but the time without kids, without
Speaker 1: the phone, without work, without responsibility, just to be together.
Speaker 1: You can't have a long marriage without accommodating the other person.
Speaker 1: You just can't. It's impossible. But there's always going to
Speaker 1: be growing pains, especially when you get married later in life,
Speaker 1: when you're already a fully formed grown up with your
Speaker 1: own lives, your own friends, your own careers and interests.
Speaker 1: You're on side of the pad, you're on favorite TV shows,
Speaker 1: all of your own stuff, your own baggage, I'm a
Speaker 1: very impulsive person and feels a very laid back person.
Speaker 1: So he's a kind of person that if something happens
Speaker 1: that needs a reaction, he will it back and go
Speaker 1: over many of the options. I, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: am running for the phone. I'm going to fix it now.
Speaker 1: And sometimes that's good and sometimes that's not good. So
Speaker 1: we had to figure out how to talk it through
Speaker 1: so that if he took forever or not forever, but
Speaker 1: if he took a while to think about it, to me,
Speaker 1: it felt like forever, and I was aggravated by that.
Speaker 1: And if I jumped for the phone, he was aggravated
Speaker 1: that I was being too impulsive. So we had to
Speaker 1: learn how to come to a middle ground there and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's just think about this for a couple of minutes,
Speaker 1: and let's just see I don't think this is a
Speaker 1: good thing to react to right away. This one really
Speaker 1: hit home for me, the idea of just taking some
Speaker 1: time to find a middle ground. See, I am also
Speaker 1: very impulsive, and Nick he's one of those people that
Speaker 1: needs to marinate. It's got to marinate on things. But
Speaker 1: it's taken me five plus years of marriage to figure
Speaker 1: that out. Somebody won said that a successful marriage is
Speaker 1: is one where both people don't panic at the same time.
Speaker 1: So we had to learn that as well. That the
Speaker 1: fact that he does take longer than I do, and
Speaker 1: that I do work quicker than he does react quicker,
Speaker 1: we both had to appreciate that in each other and
Speaker 1: give each other the opportunity to at least make their
Speaker 1: case before we decided it wasn't the best way, and
Speaker 1: let each person make their case. And sometimes we go
Speaker 1: his way and sometimes we go my way. Despite being very,
Speaker 1: very famous people for a long time, Phil and Marlow
Speaker 1: try to keep their marriage out of the spotlight. Up
Speaker 1: until this point in our lives, we've never talked about
Speaker 1: our marriage. We thought from the very beginning that our
Speaker 1: marriage would be healthy for its privacy, so we kept
Speaker 1: a very low profile. When we first got married, we
Speaker 1: came back from our honeymoon, everybody wanted us to host
Speaker 1: the Emmy's, host the People's Choice Awards, be on the
Speaker 1: cover of People magazine. It was overwhelming. We sat down
Speaker 1: and talked about it and said, let's not do this.
Speaker 1: If we just keep it private, maybe people won't pick
Speaker 1: at it. We'll do our careers and we'll keep our
Speaker 1: personal life private. But then like thirty nine years later,
Speaker 1: they got this idea for a podcast. Well, we looked
Speaker 1: up and realized we've been married for a hundred years,
Speaker 1: so maybe we have something to share. Well, also, people
Speaker 1: had always asked us, how does your marriage last? What
Speaker 1: do you do and everything? We said, we don't know.
Speaker 1: I love him, he loves me. We like each other.
Speaker 1: I like the way he smells. Does that count. We
Speaker 1: started thinking about it, and when we were having our
Speaker 1: thirty ninth anniversary, we heard from a couple that was
Speaker 1: getting a divorce that had been married a long time,
Speaker 1: and we said, wow, I wonder what they did wrong,
Speaker 1: and I wonder what we did right. And we just
Speaker 1: got curious about it. And so we did that until
Speaker 1: this time, and we thought, let's find out what makes
Speaker 1: it work. And then Phil said, Okay, I'll do this
Speaker 1: with you. I'll go on these double dates and everything,
Speaker 1: but I'm not going to talk about our marriage. And
Speaker 1: I said, okay, I mean, after forty years, you're not
Speaker 1: going to change somebody. But then when we got into
Speaker 1: these conversations like when Mark and Swell has talked about
Speaker 1: his jealousy with Kelly Rippa, Phil talked about his jealousy
Speaker 1: with Chris Kristofferson. Marla made a movie with Chris Christofferson
Speaker 1: and there was a love scene in the movie was
Speaker 1: four minutes long. It looked to me like it was
Speaker 1: about four years long. I remember sitting and watching this
Speaker 1: and I really did. I I had a sense of
Speaker 1: how draining jealousy is. It takes away the time that
Speaker 1: he should be devoted to improving the marriage, building the marriage,
Speaker 1: making you close, and you know, it's nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the person who is the object of your jealousy.
Speaker 1: You know, Kelly Ripper had not done anything to make
Speaker 1: her husband jealous. That was his own ballgame. And that's
Speaker 1: another thing, you know, because when somebody is jealous, whether
Speaker 1: it's male or female, they're blaming it on you and
Speaker 1: you didn't do anything. It's in their head. And that's
Speaker 1: something that the couples have to come to. I mean,
Speaker 1: Phil was very jealous of me with men beginning of
Speaker 1: our relationship, where you talked too long with that man
Speaker 1: at the party and so forth, and then after a
Speaker 1: while you just gave it up. You didn't think it anymore, right, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was the lesson for me was It just
Speaker 1: took a lot of weight off my shoulders to be
Speaker 1: able to stab jealousy in the heart and get rid
Speaker 1: of it. It is a very liberating thing when you
Speaker 1: sit down with another couple, you're sharing stories. That's the
Speaker 1: fun of being with somebody, with another couple, or being
Speaker 1: with a group of people. And so we were sharing
Speaker 1: stories and before you knew it, even my silent sam
Speaker 1: irishman here started opening up to these people. I mean,
Speaker 1: he didn't open up to me. He's always been open
Speaker 1: to me, but to other people, which is I think
Speaker 1: you're pretty amazed that you've done that. Right. Well, we
Speaker 1: wound up, you know. We figured these interviews would be
Speaker 1: like what twenty five minutes, half hour, well, three hours? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, and then finally I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm really sorry, but we have to leave, you know,
Speaker 1: and they would look at me and it's got a
Speaker 1: laugh because they had been wondering themselves, when are these
Speaker 1: people going to leave? No, they weren't. We made friends. Actually,
Speaker 1: we made some new friends. Some of the people like
Speaker 1: Alan Alden and Arlene Alden, Rob Ryner and Michelle Ryner.
Speaker 1: We knew a lot of the people, but many we
Speaker 1: didn't know, and it was fun to get to know
Speaker 1: them in such an intimate way. And we were both
Speaker 1: surprised that so many people said yes that they would
Speaker 1: sit down with us, went to their homes and they
Speaker 1: put out things to drink and eat. We had a
Speaker 1: really fun time, a really fun time. I think it
Speaker 1: it mellowed us to see how all these people have
Speaker 1: found the safe spot. We said to each other, you know,
Speaker 1: our marriage is really a cushion. It's a cushion in
Speaker 1: life that if you don't have that, boy, life has
Speaker 1: got a lot of sharp corners. But when you have
Speaker 1: someone who has your back, as all of these people
Speaker 1: did and we do, it gave us an appreciation for that.
Speaker 1: Phil will say to me sometime, Oh, that's great that
Speaker 1: you got that for us, or that you invited that
Speaker 1: person over. I'm so glad you did that. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad that we did this thing you thought of. It's
Speaker 1: an appreciation for the other person, or a gratitude, you know,
Speaker 1: to say to each other. I'm so grateful for what
Speaker 1: you said to me this morning about how I needed
Speaker 1: to not feel bad about something. I'm so grateful for
Speaker 1: what we have together. It means so much. I mean,
Speaker 1: I see marriage like a big plant, a big tree,
Speaker 1: and you need to water it. You know, nothing living
Speaker 1: can continue to flourish unless you water it, unless you
Speaker 1: give it food to nourish it. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people get married and then they think, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're married. But it's not that it's a lot of work,
Speaker 1: because that sounds drudgery. It's that it just needs attention.
Speaker 1: I think just having the conversation made our own marriage
Speaker 1: room here. We had more room in the marriage because
Speaker 1: we were bringing in all these other people's feelings and experiences.
Speaker 1: We kind of absorbed them and appreciated. It was fun.
Speaker 1: It was fun talking to people who took their marriage seriously.
Speaker 1: I have to say that I've played so many excerpts
Speaker 1: of this conversation with Philla Marlow to Neck. They're definitely
Speaker 1: teaching me something about my own marriage, much like phil
Speaker 1: and Marlow. Making a podcast about marriage has actually improved
Speaker 1: my own marriage. It has. I don't know if it
Speaker 1: has for Neck, but it has for me. So many
Speaker 1: of these episodes have become like marriage therapy for me
Speaker 1: because they let me see how other couples live in
Speaker 1: the world, what they do behind closed doors. What they
Speaker 1: actually believe. Let they just got things done and live
Speaker 1: in the world together and even after having such a
Speaker 1: long marriage. Their podcasted the same thing for Phil and Marlowe,
Speaker 1: and I think what we were interviewing all these couples,
Speaker 1: these kinds of topics would come up. You know, it
Speaker 1: was a double date. That's why we call a double date.
Speaker 1: They would talk about jealousy, We would talk about jelsie.
Speaker 1: They would talk about fighting. How do you come back
Speaker 1: from a fight? That's a big thing. We talked about sex.
Speaker 1: We asked Alie Wentworth is such a darling. I love her.
Speaker 1: She's so funny, and she's so out there and wild
Speaker 1: and free. And she's buried to George Stephanopoulos, who's pretty
Speaker 1: buttoned up guy. And you would never fix them up together,
Speaker 1: but they're perfect together. And asked her she's written some
Speaker 1: books about relationships, and I said to her, what's your
Speaker 1: advice about sex? And she said, have it and have
Speaker 1: a lot of it, which I thought was great. Rob
Speaker 1: ryanher said he's married to Michelle. They have a great
Speaker 1: marriage too. I said, what's your advice for a young
Speaker 1: married couple. He said, Mary, your best friend that you
Speaker 1: can have sex with. So sex, best friend, no jealousy.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are kind of As you start to
Speaker 1: look at the building blocks of how people have made
Speaker 1: their marriage is work, you see that these are some
Speaker 1: of the ingredients avoid a marriage that involves only one
Speaker 1: passionate member. I have to wonder how many people went
Speaker 1: through life dragging their spouse across the world, a spouse
Speaker 1: not interested in the marriage, not as committed. You see
Speaker 1: that a lot in relationships, Well, one person is doing
Speaker 1: all the accommodating, and then that does become work, and
Speaker 1: that's no longer a love story because a marriage really
Speaker 1: has to be a love story too. There's a growing
Speaker 1: love story. I mean, many people spoke to us about
Speaker 1: the fact that they love their wife or husband more
Speaker 1: now than when they first got married because they got
Speaker 1: to know them and they like them better. And the
Speaker 1: more you like somebody, the more you love them, and
Speaker 1: the more you cherish them. This episode of Committee was
Speaker 1: hosted and reported by Joe Piazza, with special thanks to
Speaker 1: Marla Thomas and Philed Onto You. Supervising producer is Ramsey Young.
Speaker 1: The executive producers are Joe Piazza and Tyler Klein. Theme
Speaker 1: song and music by Tristan McNeill. For comments, suggestions, or
Speaker 1: to be part of the show, give us a call
Speaker 1: at four zero four nine nine six one one seven three.
Speaker 1: That's four zero four nine nine six one one seven three,
Speaker 1: or send us an email at Joe at Committed podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. That's jo at Committed podcast dot com. You
Speaker 1: can grab a copy of Joe's book How to Be
Speaker 1: Married on Amazon or wherever books are sold. Committed as
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio and producing our studios located in Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1: From more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: If you like this episode, you can listen to Committed
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.