What makes a soulmate, a life parter, an ideal marriage? Oscar Wilde said it so well.
“You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes or for their fancy car,” said the poet and playwright. “But because they sing a song only you can hear.”
In her new podcast, Double Date, Marlo Thomas with husband Phil Donahue have illuminating conversations with guest couples as they delve into the proverbial songs that unite them in a deep way.
Marlo Thomas
Matthew Murphy
Thomas, an actress-author-activist and Donahue, a talk show pioneer and journalist teamed up with Pushkin Industries to chat with celebrated couples centering around the joys, travails and complexities of marriage and all it entails. Married for four decades Thomas and Donahue visit the homes of long-married couples for in-depth fly-on-the-wall chats about love and all the pieces that connects them or adds to their struggles.
The roster of guests including Viola Davis and Julius Tennon, John McEnroe and Patty Smyth, Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, President Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan, George Stephanopoulos and Ali Wentworth, John and Justine Leguizamo, Rob Reiner and Michele Singer, Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos and more.
Recently Thomas and Donahue had a particularly revealing and frank chat with guests Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson, who have been married since 1995. In this “double date” both Danson and Steenburgen, who met while doing the film Pontiac Moon shared their vulnerabilities and fears of opening up their hearts to one another.
Danson had already been married twice when he met Steenburgen. “By the time we met I was convinced that I was incapable of having a relationship that I wouldn’t mess up,” said Danson, who was completely smitten with her from the get-go.
Steenburgen, who had just ended a bad relationship before meeting Danson, was scared to make a bad choice. She was trying to reconcile what her head was telling her and what her heart was dictating.
“Your brain can say… ‘I need to walk away’… but my feet walked towards him… and I can only assume that was the voice of my soul,” said Steenburgen, who was convinced that she was not good at relationships. “My brain was not that simple.” When Thomas asked Danson how he had the optimism to marry a third time, he said he found a way to stop “lying” so much about “everything.”
The couple also shared that their bond is unique because even from the beginning they put down their guard, told the truth about everything and agreed not to keep secrets from one another. “I had never not had secrets I had been full of secrets. And it caused us to feel alone in life,” said Steenburgen. Danson added, “When we’re in love and in tune and communicative and laughing—when we’re how we are most of the time—it is truly divine. It is heaven on earth.”
