Phil Donahue, the longtime host of the trend-setting TV talk show The Phil Donahue Show, died Sunday evening following a long illness, surrounded by family including his longtime wife, actor Marlo Thomas. He was 88.
His death was announced on The Today Show this morning. Today shared a statement from Donahue’s family. See the announcement below.
Calling Donahue “a daytime staple” who pioneered a format that had been replicated by others, Today hosts noted that Donahue had been presented a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden just this summer.
Donahue was married to Thomas for more than 40 years, having met when the That Girl star met Donahue when she was a guest on his talk show.
The family statement reads, “Groundbreaking TV talk show journalist Phil Donahue died Sunday night at home surrounded by his wife of 44 years Marlo Thomas, his sister, his children, grandchildren and his beloved Golden Retriever Charlie. Donahue was 88 years old and passed away peacefully following a long illness.”
Donahue was born December 21, 1935, in Cleveland, and in the late 1950s embarked on a career as a radio journalist at first in his hometown and then Adrian, Michigan.
But it was his TV work in Dayton, Ohio, that truly launched not only Donahue’s career but what would become a novel and highly influential style of daytime talk TV. In 1959, he was hired as a TV reporter at Dayton’s WHIO, where his empathetic style of interviewing was first noticed by the public and his bosses. Within four years, he also had a radio call-in show called Conversation Piece for WHIO’s affiliated radio station.
Within several more years, he had taken his talk endeavor to TV, hosting a business show and co-anchoring the evening news. In 1967, he was scooped up by a competing Dayton station, WLWD, who offered him a daytime morning interview show with a studio audience.
With a studio audience that was treated by Donahue with respect – the host would make his way through the seats and hand over the mic to audience members with questions for guests – The Phil Donahue Show became a Dayton-area staple and favorite. Donahue is regarded as an early advocate for women, giving his largely female audience the opportunity to speak and ask questions on serious topics rather than the home ec subjects that so many daytime talkers focused on.
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Unlike Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas and numerous other daytime talkers, The Phil Donahue Show typically featured one guest per episode, the better to delve into serious issues with considerable depth. Among his earliest, most frequent and most controversial guests was atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who provoked the midwestern audiences with her anti-religion opinions.
By 1969, the show branched out from Dayton to syndicate in other Midwestern markets, and by ’71 was airing in more than 30 cities.
As his show grew in reach and popularity, Donahue collected not only larger audiences and bigger celebrities, but significant accolades: During the 1967-1996 run of his talk show, Donahue won nine Daytime Emmy Awards (1977–80, 1982–83, 1985–86, and 1988) as outstanding host.
The show’s growing appeal prompted a move in 1974 when he moved his show from Dayton to Chicago’s WGN, where The Phil Donahue Show became simply Donahue. Eschewing the circus-style shoutfests that would become the next stage in daytime’s development with hosts like Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake, Donahue, who would move the production to New York City in 1985, continued his warmer, though highly inquisitive, style, an approach that declined somewhat in popularity during the ’90s but remained a gold standard for serious-minded daytime TV.
His usually genial demeanor did not, however, mean that Donahue avoided hot-button issues. Quite the contrary. Carrying a hand-held mic and nearly running from one audience member to another, Donahue helped open up daytime talk to a wide swath of issues and personalities who were controversial then and, in many instances, remain so today. He gave voice to gay rights activists, anti-war protestors, abortion rights supporters and opponents, the Ku Klux Klan, atheists, pedophilia within the Catholic Church clergy, 1990s Club Kids, and feminists and anti-feminists.
In one particularly memorable 1979 episode, he defended an audience member who dared criticize a surly Ayn Rand, who called the woman “impolite” and a “hippie.”
“This is the kind of woman we’ve spent a long time trying to attract to our audience,” Donahue told the rudely dismissive Rand. Raising his voice, he told the author, “Don’t be so sensitive!”
In 1977, actor Thomas appeared on Donahue’s show, and the two developed an obvious rapport on camera and a relationship off camera. They married in 1980.
In 2002, Donahue hosted a new talk show on MSNBC, but found his anti-war stance at odds with the country’s generally favorable view of George W. Bush’s military actions in Iraq. His low-rated MSNBC show was soon canceled.
Later projects include the 2007 documentary Body of War, and, with wife Thomas, the 2020 book What Makes a Marriage Last: 40 Celebrated Couples Share with Us the Secrets to a Happy Life.
Donahue received the Daytime Emmy Award for lifetime achievement in 1996. He received a Peabody Award in 1981 and has been inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.
Donahue’s Medal of Freedom biography noted that “In an era in which daytime television was dominated by a mundane mix of soap operas, game shows and musical variety shows, Donahue eschewed the orchestras and flashing lights for a single prop—a hand-held mic—and stormed onto the airwaves with programs devoted to the most controversial issues of our time. And for the first time in television history, a TV host was inviting the American audience to become a part of the national conversation, both inside his studio and from viewers phoning in from around the country. ‘Is the caller there?’ became a national catchphrase.”
His Medal of Freedom biography also mentioned some highlights of Donahue’s show: Milton Friedman deciphering “arcane economics,” Nelson Mandela decrying apartheid, Gloria Steinem introducing “a new era of activist feminism,” and Muhammad Ali speaking out on race, religion and sports. Donahue was, the bio states, “the first TV host to feature a person living with AIDS, when the number of cases was only in the hundreds.”
“Most important,” the bio continues, “Donahue recognized the unmatchable power of his medium, and fought to ensure that his legions of viewers—whether seated in his studio, or calling in with questions from their homes—were part of the critical dialogue that brought people together. When consumer advocate Ralph Nader (author of Unsafe at Any Speed) came onto the show to talk about automobile safety, Donahue also brought on the recently retired president of General Motors so that viewers could witness the debate firsthand and decide for themselves exactly what was at stake when they climbed behind the wheel of the family wagon.” In 1986, Donahue became the first Western journalist to visit the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after its catastrophic event that year, and in 1992 he invited Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush onto the same episode “so that they could speak with each other—and viewers—in an effort to articulate their differences.”
“After 29 years in syndication and five years in retirement, Donahue returned to television with a program on MSNBC,” the Medal of Freedom statement reads. “Less than six months into the run, during the ramp-up to the Iraq War, he began bringing on guests who were denouncing the planned U.S. invasion—including former U.S. generals. He was the first and only journalist at the time to open that discussion. Today, historians, the journalistic establishment and most of the American public have come around to Donahue’s way of thinking, rejecting the Iraq War as a tragic mistake.”
Survivors include wife Thomas, survivors include his children Michael, Daniel, Kevin and Mary Rose; and a sister. Another son, Jim, died at 51 in 2014 of an aortic aneurysm.
Donahue’s family requests that donations be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital or the Phil Donahue/Notre Dame Scholarship Fund in lieu of flowers.