Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hi, I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlo Thomas, and
Speaker 1: we're going on a series of double dates to find
Speaker 1: out what makes a marriage last. That old expression is
Speaker 1: there a doctor in the house was never more fitting
Speaker 1: than one afternoon when Marlow and I had the doctor
Speaker 1: in our house. Rebecca and doctor Sanjay Gupta were in
Speaker 1: town from Atlanta, so they dropped by our apartment to
Speaker 1: talk marriage. From the first moment they walked in, you
Speaker 1: could feel their calm compatibility. They have three daughters and
Speaker 1: a busy life, and they do a lot of philanthropic
Speaker 1: work together. It's a relationship that's built on different cultural backgrounds.
Speaker 1: Unlike Rebecca, whose family is Scandinavian, Sanjay grew up with
Speaker 1: a distinct sense of being an outsider as an Indian
Speaker 1: American in a small Michigan town. I don't think people
Speaker 1: knew what to make of Indians. That was the only Indian,
Speaker 1: you know, really there, So there was no there was
Speaker 1: no history with I was obviously different colored skin, had
Speaker 1: a funny name, you know, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: But other than that, there was no There was no
Speaker 1: institutional prejudice that I that I experienced with Like with
Speaker 1: with Rebecca's family obviously any of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: There was other prejudices just because you were different. That
Speaker 1: was yeah, I mean, you know where I grew up,
Speaker 1: Especially if you're the only person that looks like me,
Speaker 1: you tend to then take on the characteristic and other
Speaker 1: people's minds of every sort of you know, fringe group.
Speaker 1: So you know, for for example, the Iran hostage crisis
Speaker 1: was happening in nineteen seventy nine. You remember Jimmy Carter
Speaker 1: was president and and um, I was ten years old
Speaker 1: and I'm not Iranian. But you know, it didn't matter.
Speaker 1: You were suddenly somebody else. You know, you were an
Speaker 1: outsider during that time. So I remember that being a
Speaker 1: really hard time, the Iran hostage crisis, for because it
Speaker 1: was such a such a big thing in the news
Speaker 1: and and every day it was something you know, um,
Speaker 1: and you know, it didn't make sense for me to
Speaker 1: remind people that wasn't Iranian. It kind of was missing
Speaker 1: the point, right, But so so yeah, there was there was.
Speaker 1: There was a fair amount of bullying. I think that
Speaker 1: happened you know, younger younger years in particular. Well, what's
Speaker 1: interesting is I think Detroit is unique in that it has.
Speaker 1: That's how it kind of it's a huge immigration community,
Speaker 1: but everybody stays in like their little neighborhood. The largest
Speaker 1: Arabic population outside of Saudi Arabia, and it's in Dearborn,
Speaker 1: I think, right, dear h that was born, dear boy,
Speaker 1: that right? Yeah, Suci, I imagine that Sanjay's childhood experience
Speaker 1: would cause this couple to have completely different points of view.
Speaker 1: That's what I would have thought too. We kind of
Speaker 1: grew up similar, so we have very similar values. We
Speaker 1: grew up similar. Yeah. See it's hard to say that
Speaker 1: with his parents being Indian and mind not, I guess,
Speaker 1: but um, we both came from small towns in Michigan,
Speaker 1: and both came from parents of like, you know, working,
Speaker 1: you know, white collar parents kind of. My father worked
Speaker 1: for Ford Motor Company, just like his parents worked for
Speaker 1: Ford Motor Company. Um, you know, they, all of our
Speaker 1: parents just their one desire was us to have a
Speaker 1: great education and then they made all of them made
Speaker 1: sacrifices for that to happen. And we kind of have
Speaker 1: that in common. We we feel that that's important when
Speaker 1: we have other I mean, we both grew up drinking
Speaker 1: theme in powdered milk, so we have things that were
Speaker 1: in common for us. You're Rebecca Olsen. Yeah, that sounds
Speaker 1: like a character in a family sitcom. I think it
Speaker 1: was a character in a couple of books. But Tom
Speaker 1: Sawyer and a few others before that. Wow, that was
Speaker 1: a great winning Was that okay? With your parents? My Um,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I think that there was a deep desire,
Speaker 1: especially for immigrants, to have their children marry within the
Speaker 1: same culture. My parents were a little different. It was interesting.
Speaker 1: My my mom was from pakist what is now Pakistan.
Speaker 1: She fled during the partition, so she was a refugee
Speaker 1: child for the first twelve fifteen years of her life. Um,
Speaker 1: and my dad was was in India, so they're both Indian,
Speaker 1: but but for my dad's side of the family, she
Speaker 1: represented a very different part of India, alm so different
Speaker 1: that it was like a completely different country, completely different culture.
Speaker 1: And when they got married, neither one of their parents
Speaker 1: attended the wedding. Oh the well, yeah, I mean they
Speaker 1: just did. They didn't support it. They didn't support the
Speaker 1: wedding and well that day in each they both would
Speaker 1: have had arranged marriages and instead his parents met in
Speaker 1: the United States outside of their own parents, and because
Speaker 1: they met in the United States and not some neither
Speaker 1: of them had their own parents arranged who they were
Speaker 1: going to marry. Both of their own parents were kind
Speaker 1: of like, m this isn't what we set up and
Speaker 1: this is in our traditions, So they were a little
Speaker 1: bit against his parents were pretting married. So your parents
Speaker 1: married in this country, people immigrated here. They both immigrated
Speaker 1: and getting married here a love marriage as opposed to
Speaker 1: in arranged marriages. Rebecca said, it was very unusual. I mean, I,
Speaker 1: you know, in a bigger deal over time. I didn't.
Speaker 1: Now I've met tons of people who are my contemporaries
Speaker 1: Indians whose parents, all of them had arranged marriages. So
Speaker 1: we haven't found anybody else that sort of gotten married
Speaker 1: the way that my parents did. And as a result,
Speaker 1: my friends, especially my friends, who were thinking about getting married,
Speaker 1: especially if it was someone who was not Indian, it
Speaker 1: was always my parents that they would go to to
Speaker 1: talk to. They became those parents for you know, all
Speaker 1: my friends who wanted Okay, you guys did this sort
Speaker 1: of very radical thing by having a love marriage, and
Speaker 1: you weren't even from the same part of India, the
Speaker 1: same cast, the same background. How did it work? And
Speaker 1: so when we were talking about getting married while there,
Speaker 1: I think still a desire on their part for me
Speaker 1: to marry somebody Indian. They were much more that they
Speaker 1: had lived through that, they went through it. Although I
Speaker 1: say that at the beginning they still really wanted him
Speaker 1: to marry somebody India, right and um, and then while
Speaker 1: we were dating and they realized that it was that
Speaker 1: we were more likely to be together, then they started
Speaker 1: to you know, be more accepting of it. Did you
Speaker 1: have Indian girlfriends before then? Um? Yeah, I did any thing,
Speaker 1: nothing too too serious, but yeah, um, and it was
Speaker 1: all in college, you know, it wasn't anything earlier, so
Speaker 1: these weren't necessarily you know, my dad was funny. He Um,
Speaker 1: he said, I don't want to meet any of these
Speaker 1: girls unless you're going to marry him. That's basically what
Speaker 1: he told me, and my mom sort of followed that,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was in line with that. So
Speaker 1: they're not frivolous people. They're you know, they're they're engineers,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're mathematics people. They didn't talk about love,
Speaker 1: they didn't talk about marriage that so you know, if
Speaker 1: I brought home a girlfriend and I was like, look,
Speaker 1: are you marrying her? Is that why we're meeting her
Speaker 1: or not? What's the point? Yeah, what's the point? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really was. What's the point? They didn't. There wasn't
Speaker 1: a lot of they're not a particularly emotional couple. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're loving, but they're not very emotional in this regard.
Speaker 1: So my dad still shook my hand, I mean every
Speaker 1: single time. There was no hugs until I came along.
Speaker 1: And now if I don't hug him when I'm walking
Speaker 1: the door, he's like, where's my hug. So it's sweet
Speaker 1: how they've kind of warmed up to part and part
Speaker 1: of that I think is like my mom's parents and
Speaker 1: my dad, and my dad's parents and my mom, they
Speaker 1: didn't because again there was this friction that always existed,
Speaker 1: so he could feel it as soon when it for me,
Speaker 1: when it was when the grandparents were over, it was
Speaker 1: a palpable tension and there was a lot of nice
Speaker 1: to meet you, and I, you know, shaking my hands
Speaker 1: because it wasn't arranged. And then they felt like they
Speaker 1: were very different backgrounds and and I don't think that
Speaker 1: my my dad's parents probably ever, even until the very end,
Speaker 1: fully accepted my mom. Wow, my mom was family was
Speaker 1: not very devout. My dad's mom was probably the most
Speaker 1: devout Hindu out of all four grandparents. Um. She was
Speaker 1: a Jane, which is a very sort of a more
Speaker 1: strict Hindu, you know, tenant. But I think, you know,
Speaker 1: just because my mom's parents were, they were fleeing, they were,
Speaker 1: you know, fleeing persecution, and you know, the idea of
Speaker 1: religion was a bit of an indulgence. I think for them.
Speaker 1: You know, we had a little we had a little
Speaker 1: deity in our house growing up, but you know, there
Speaker 1: weren't any temples, so it wasn't like we could really
Speaker 1: be devout in the United States at that time in
Speaker 1: the sixties. But they had experienced religious persecution in Pakistan
Speaker 1: for sure, causant to leave that. They were definitely more
Speaker 1: reserved about showing any kind of religious What about your parents,
Speaker 1: how did they feel about you're marrying a Hindu person? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: good question. Um my dad had passed away long before
Speaker 1: him and I started to date me. He probably, Um,
Speaker 1: who knows how he would react anything. We'd probably have
Speaker 1: been fine by the time we married. Um my mom
Speaker 1: would have been. I mean like he'd gotten like you know,
Speaker 1: he was um, he was he was finished and Swedish,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't that he he was just like, you know,
Speaker 1: we stay at home and we do our things and
Speaker 1: we wasn't until they retired that they suddenly developed this
Speaker 1: huge social life, right, And I think my dad probably
Speaker 1: would have had been very similar except for the fact
Speaker 1: that he passed away before you know, before he even retired,
Speaker 1: when he passed fifty, and would have About your mom,
Speaker 1: how did she feel about san Jay? Oh? She she
Speaker 1: loved him. She she My mom's just fig sweetheart. She
Speaker 1: loves she. She thinks he's so smart and fascinating and
Speaker 1: even to this day she's like, well, I want to
Speaker 1: know where he is as I worry about him, and
Speaker 1: and she's very like like humble and chi around him.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of sweet. Right. My mother was Italian,
Speaker 1: she's gone. My father was Lebanese and they were the
Speaker 1: children of arranged marriages, you know, but both both my
Speaker 1: grandparents were arranged marriages. But my mother didn't like Irish people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I read a huge article about that. Did she live
Speaker 1: here in New York and into Michigan Detroit in Detroit
Speaker 1: in a sort of lower middle class and mean, her
Speaker 1: father was Italian and they had two trucks and they
Speaker 1: sold produce off their trucks. So there were five kids.
Speaker 1: They went to school, they had an education, and my
Speaker 1: grandmother stayed home. But she was a singer and got
Speaker 1: little job singing in the synagogue or the church or
Speaker 1: whoever would have her. She would love to sing. But
Speaker 1: but in those poor neighborhoods, you know, the Jews had
Speaker 1: their area and the Irish their area, and the Italian
Speaker 1: said their area, and so the Irish were considered sort
Speaker 1: of the lower class people and the shandy Irish. So
Speaker 1: when I first told my mother I was going out
Speaker 1: with Phil Donahue, she said, oh, he's Irish, and it
Speaker 1: was like my mother had a thing there. And then
Speaker 1: well then she got to know him and she loved him. Well,
Speaker 1: he won her over, he said, with his Irish malarkey.
Speaker 1: You know, he won her over. So how did you meet?
Speaker 1: I did we meet at a bar? As a classic
Speaker 1: American story, mutual friends introduced us in college. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: went to the University of Michigan. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: when we met we were both dating someone else at
Speaker 1: the time. We definitely had more of a shared experience
Speaker 1: right away. We just had a lot that we had
Speaker 1: in common talk about right out of the gate, and
Speaker 1: you were thinking about I mean, I know we were
Speaker 1: taking she was taking a lot of science classes. I
Speaker 1: remember that because she was really good at it, and
Speaker 1: I was saying I needed to get my act together.
Speaker 1: I was going to go to medical school. He says,
Speaker 1: we'll have more ter a quick break. We're back to
Speaker 1: our conversation with san Jay and Rebecca Gupta. It seems
Speaker 1: these two have found the path to harmony together, but
Speaker 1: as we all know, spending a lifetime with another person
Speaker 1: requires some doing, especially when it comes to dealing with
Speaker 1: each other's differences. You're absolutely right that there's accommodations that
Speaker 1: you have to make. And like, I'm a really neat person.
Speaker 1: I'm not aligning people who are not neat. But but
Speaker 1: I think that for me, you know, it's just it's
Speaker 1: it's just how I am and she's not. It's not
Speaker 1: that I'm not a neat nick. There's just there's only
Speaker 1: so much time in dating get everything in the world.
Speaker 1: His office is like nothing on it but the one
Speaker 1: little computer, because his life is it's like on the computer.
Speaker 1: He can store everything there, he writes everything there, maybe
Speaker 1: a glass of water. I mean that it's just just
Speaker 1: and my office is a constant mess, and there's everybody's
Speaker 1: in and out of my office and they trip over
Speaker 1: stuff and knock it all over the place. And he
Speaker 1: walks in. He's like, my mind is gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: lose it. Like, just shut the door. That's how we
Speaker 1: can get along. Visceral sort of pain as I and
Speaker 1: she says, I can't find something, IM go really, but
Speaker 1: I was What I was going to say, though, is
Speaker 1: that the accommodation are all offset by trust to me,
Speaker 1: you know, And that's probably the the the heart of
Speaker 1: the whole thing is that, like I don't trust anybody
Speaker 1: more than I trust Rebecca to have my best interests,
Speaker 1: and that can be with regard to you know, our
Speaker 1: financial stuff. But also like I don't know what to
Speaker 1: do here. I'm dealing with something I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: the right answer is and there's no absolute right answer,
Speaker 1: but there's probably a right answer for me. And so
Speaker 1: who do I like, who would who would be able
Speaker 1: to answer that? And I think my parents can't answer
Speaker 1: that because ultimately they they're incapable, I think, fundamentally, of
Speaker 1: seeing things from outside their vantage point. They can't put
Speaker 1: themselves outside their own shoes. It's not a bad thing,
Speaker 1: it's just who they are. She can. I can tolerate
Speaker 1: the messy office, and I can tolerate because I come
Speaker 1: home at the end of the day and I'm dealing
Speaker 1: with stuff. And it was always me. I was a
Speaker 1: pretty solitary creature, and then all of a sudden, I
Speaker 1: started like dabbling in this idea of letting someone else in.
Speaker 1: She's really good at it, and I trusted her. When
Speaker 1: you have a big argument, there's one of you pout
Speaker 1: or false silent or yes he really end I mean
Speaker 1: he's still mad about me for buying him a hand sandwich,
Speaker 1: like you know, fifteen years ago or something. I mean,
Speaker 1: some big arguments on and on, and then they'd become
Speaker 1: even though they might be like poking at a at
Speaker 1: a splinter, but still there, they almost become kind of
Speaker 1: you know, like a running joke or something. We've had
Speaker 1: big arguments, for sure, and I think the longest they've
Speaker 1: lasted is probably a couple three days. In the sense
Speaker 1: that not not that we're at it for a couple
Speaker 1: three days, but we're definitely still pissed off, both of us.
Speaker 1: And and but you know, um, I came from a
Speaker 1: really pretty sedate household. I could probably count on one
Speaker 1: hand the number of times it was really yelling as
Speaker 1: when as a child, when I grew up, and I
Speaker 1: can remember those times because they were so jarring, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's not really the style I think for us
Speaker 1: to have like a big argument, the sense that it's
Speaker 1: explosive in any way. But I will get upset. I'm
Speaker 1: much more transparent about it now. I would hold it
Speaker 1: in expect her to figure it out, And then I
Speaker 1: realized at some point that was a waste of time,
Speaker 1: because why am I waiting for her to figure it?
Speaker 1: I could just tell her and you know it's not
Speaker 1: then at least they can get it off my chest.
Speaker 1: What do you think you were waiting? That's an interesting
Speaker 1: thing because I was being passive aggressive, like if she
Speaker 1: didn't figure it out, I could just do even longer
Speaker 1: you know about it, you know, like I was being
Speaker 1: feeling vindicated that she didn't even know why I would
Speaker 1: be upset, Like how could you know I've been married
Speaker 1: how long? And you don't even know this thing about me,
Speaker 1: you know, so there would be that that part of it,
Speaker 1: I will say, and I think this is a little
Speaker 1: bit of a difference between men and women, although you know,
Speaker 1: I can't obviously speak for all men or all women,
Speaker 1: but you know, I have friends, but I don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of friends that I would talk to about
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. So she was the person that
Speaker 1: I would talk to. There were times too, and I
Speaker 1: would look at him and I'd say, can you not
Speaker 1: being greet because I need to talk to my best
Speaker 1: friend right now to how to solve this problem, and
Speaker 1: that would help him go, Okay, Yes, we need to
Speaker 1: kind of shift gears into from the emotional we're upset
Speaker 1: about whatever it is that has caused us to be upset,
Speaker 1: to the intellectual what are we going to do about it? Now?
Speaker 1: It's really hard for me to be mad at him
Speaker 1: for very long because he always makes me laugh and
Speaker 1: he's so smart that it really, you know, keeps me going,
Speaker 1: makes me constantly be on my toes, which I love that.
Speaker 1: What do you think are some of the A couple
Speaker 1: of the things that you have to have in order
Speaker 1: to have a marriage, last genuine respect, you know, I
Speaker 1: think everything else follows from that probably and you know
Speaker 1: there's people who you might really like and even love,
Speaker 1: but maybe when you really think about it, you don't
Speaker 1: respect that in every single way. And then trust for me,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. May maybe it's because I
Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of people that I trusted and
Speaker 1: so I mean as a child or as a child
Speaker 1: and even you know, I mean when you go through
Speaker 1: um MED school and it's it's it's such a competitive environment,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, you know where where I started, I
Speaker 1: was accepted into medical school out of high school. So
Speaker 1: it was a program that did that and everyone was
Speaker 1: very some of them are my good friends now, but
Speaker 1: it was very competitive environment. Um. You know, people sabotaged
Speaker 1: each other's experiments and no one was rooting for each other.
Speaker 1: Everyone was rooting for themselves, and so trust in that
Speaker 1: environment was challenging. I think once I got into training
Speaker 1: and nursergery training, it was it was better because now
Speaker 1: we were all sort of a more shared experience. But well,
Speaker 1: what is what are yours? So? Um? So I was
Speaker 1: a family law attorney, so I represented people and divorces
Speaker 1: or people who were at that point where their relationships
Speaker 1: were going the wrong way, and I can tend the
Speaker 1: number one thing that causes people to divorce from my
Speaker 1: experience was resentment. And resentment can if when resentment starts,
Speaker 1: then all the other things go. When you know, when
Speaker 1: like if he's working really hard and making all the
Speaker 1: money and I'm you know, and he resents that, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not contributing to that, or if I'm with like
Speaker 1: babies crying and you know, having no sleep and I
Speaker 1: start to resent him for being on the road and
Speaker 1: getting eight hours of sleep or something, and resentment really
Speaker 1: only can be cured through communication before the resentment builds.
Speaker 1: And I have to say there have been a few
Speaker 1: times when I will say to him, I'm working way
Speaker 1: too hard and I and I need you to notice.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great point. I haven't heard that before,
Speaker 1: that you notice something that is making you get to
Speaker 1: the brink of resentful and so you know the only
Speaker 1: way out of that is to communicate. And he works
Speaker 1: so hard and making sure that he is home, you know,
Speaker 1: he's set up he operates every Monday just so that
Speaker 1: he's home every weekend, so that way that he's always
Speaker 1: there for games. Yeah, do you do stuff without the
Speaker 1: kids together. Yeah, yeah, I mean, dude, we'll do trips. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a we have a group of friends that
Speaker 1: we travel with. Uh, you know, once a year, maybe
Speaker 1: twice a year, depending. And then and then Rebecca and
Speaker 1: I will we'll go out on date nights. You know,
Speaker 1: we'll just go out to dinner. Um, I just like
Speaker 1: to go more so now you know that the kids are,
Speaker 1: you know, they're more independent. Yeah. If there was a
Speaker 1: young couple who are about to be married, or thinking
Speaker 1: about getting married, or on the fence about getting married,
Speaker 1: what do you think you would want to pass on?
Speaker 1: Nothing in life is perfect? And I think you know,
Speaker 1: perfect is often the enemy of a very very good
Speaker 1: and and I you know, we say that in the
Speaker 1: operating room a lot. I just want to take out
Speaker 1: this last piece of tumor, but it's right against something
Speaker 1: important And if you do that, you could sacrifice all
Speaker 1: the incredible work you've just been doing for the last
Speaker 1: several hours in search of perfection. I think it's the
Speaker 1: same thing in marriage. I mean, you know, once you've committed,
Speaker 1: then being in search of perfection can be a destructive force.
Speaker 1: And that's something that I think I learned and I
Speaker 1: would pass that on and we do pinch ourselves every
Speaker 1: day and just think we get really lucky. You know,
Speaker 1: if you can internalize that, I think that's a really
Speaker 1: powerful force. That's Sanjay and Rebecca Gupta. I can't decide
Speaker 1: what impressed me more how nice they are or how
Speaker 1: smart they are, but more important, they have a quiet
Speaker 1: and deep understanding of each other. Now we can say
Speaker 1: we know a doctor who makes house calls all the
Speaker 1: way from Atlanta and brings his wife until next time.
Speaker 1: I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlo Thomas. You guys have
Speaker 1: been great. Yeah, we appreciate the conversation. It's fun. Double
Speaker 1: Day is a production of Pushkin Industries. The show was
Speaker 1: created by US and produced by Sarah Lily. Michael Bahari
Speaker 1: is associate producer. Musical adaptations of It Had to Be
Speaker 1: You by Stellwagen, Simfinette, Marlo and I are executive producers,
Speaker 1: along with Mia Lobell and Letal Molad from Pushkin. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Jacob Wiseberg, Malcolm Gladwell, Heather Faine, John Snars,
Speaker 1: Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostek, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams,
Speaker 1: and Bruce Kluger. If you like our show, please remember
Speaker 1: to share, rate, and review. Thanks for listening.