What Makes a Marriage Last

By Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas, HarperOne, 2020, 610 pages
Reviewed by Julie Bookman, June 22, 2020

I was less than a week away from interviewing (by phone) the long-marrieds when their fat book made a loud thud on my porch.

I plopped down with it thinking I really didn’t want to read it, but I liked it because of 53,000 anecdotes to which I could relate.

To birth this book, Phil and Marlo flew all over the country (and to Canada) to sit down and have casual conversations with (rather than “interview”) 40 “successfully married” couples, each of which gets one chapter. Phil and Marlo wrote backstory narratives to introduce and anchor each couple, then each chapter moves into the conversation with that pair (edited from the taped conversations).

Here’s the link to my piece: https://www.ajc.com/entertainment/books--literature/marlo-thomas-and-phil-donahue-share-marriage-advice-new-book/ukMBERNOMkBle9po5h86XM/

“What Makes” is a lively read, packed with good, relatable info and plenty of insight and humor. I’ve already told our daughter Scottie (development director for an LA film production company) that it could be the jumping-off point for a reality series of some kind: Maybe each episode would feature a celebrity couple having a “double date” with a couple about to get married, with the conversation centered on marital advice.*

I said the show could be called “Double Date.” (Scottie does not jot down most of the entirely brilliant ideas her mother spouts off to her, but she did order the book and put it on her company’s Ideas Radar, so that’s something.)

*What? You want my best bit of marital advice? I myself have “5 hard-n-fast rules for a good marriage,” and I’ll spare you by only issuing one: Never Pick Up His Underwear. Because he ain’t gonna pick up yours, and even if you do pick up his, you are going to be quietly resentful about doing it so don’t don’t just don’t ever do it.