Marlo Thomas spent years insisting marriage wasn’t for her, once joking it felt like “living with a jailer you have to please.” In her 2020 book, What Makes a Marriage Last: 40 Celebrated Couples Share with Us the Secrets to a Happy Life, co-written with Phil Donahue, she admitted marriage didn’t seem “roomy enough” for her—until she met him.
Donahue, the creator and host of The Phil Donahue Show, was already a father of five when they married on May 21, 1980. Thomas, then 42 and child-free, suddenly became a stepmother. From day one, she says she chose not to replace their mother, but to build friendships with the children instead—using her own upbringing as a guide, since her mother was also a trusted friend.
Their partnership lasted more than four decades, ending when Donahue died on August 18, 2024, at age 88. As Thomas mourns, she has spoken about the blended family they built and the strong bonds that still hold it together.
Donahue’s five children—Michael, Kevin, Daniel, Mary Rose, and James—were born during his first marriage to Margaret Cooney, whom he married in 1958 before they divorced in 1975. James “Jim” Donahue later died on August 11, 2014, at 51, from an aortic aneurysm.
Over the years, Thomas has shared family moments publicly, highlighting a close, supportive relationship that deepened with time.