Legendary speak present host Phil Donahue has died at age 88.
Information of Donahue’s demise broke on Monday, August 19, with a number of shops confirming that The Phil Donahue Present host “handed away peacefully following a protracted sickness,” in line with a press release shared by his household.
Donahue was surrounded by his spouse of 44 years, veteran TV and movie actress Marlo Thomas, together with “his sister, his kids, grandchildren and his beloved golden retriever, Charlie.”
The household requested that in lieu of flowers, associates and followers make a donation to St. Jude Kids’s Analysis Hospital or the Phil Donahue/Notre Dame Scholarship Fund.
Donahue turned a family title within the daytime speak present area in November 1967 when The Phil Donahue Present premiered on a neighborhood information community in Dayton, Ohio. Initially, the present was solely broadcast on stations owned by CBS. Nonetheless, it will definitely achieved nationwide syndication in1974 and moved to Chicago. Following a decade of success, The Phil Donahue Present moved to New York Metropolis in 1984 the place it was filmed on the now-iconic 30 Rockefeller Plaza studio. The present got here to an finish in September 1996 following a 29 yr run and over 7,000 episodes.
Phil Donahue Steve Granitz/WireImage
Donahue, nevertheless, didn’t keep in retirement for lengthy. He returned to tv in 2002 to host Donahue on MSNBC. The short-lived present was canceled by February of the next yr.
Except for his prolific speak present profession, Donahue was additionally recognized for his longtime relationship with spouse Thomas, 86, whom he married in 1980. She was by his aspect earlier this yr when Donahue was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom in Could by President Joe Biden.
On the time, Thomas — the star of ’60s sitcom That Lady — joked that she and Donahue don’t have an awards room of their residence — regardless that they most likely ought to.
“We don’t have a trophy room regardless that we might most likely use one for Phil — the person received 20 Emmys,” Thomas quipped to Folks on the time. ”However we maintain our awards in our personal research. The medals, nevertheless, are completely different. I had mine framed, and I can’t wait to border Phil’s and grasp it proper subsequent to it.”
He added: “His and hers medals, aspect by aspect. In a approach, it’s kinda romantic.”
After receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Donahue additionally seemed again at his lengthy profession with the publication.
“I do miss it sometimes,” he mentioned of his TV profession. “Generally I’ll shout my query to a visitor on the display screen and hope they’ll by some means hear me. However to be sincere, regardless that the medium has modified a bit — the units are fancier, the productions are slicker, and the hosts are fortunately extra numerous — the entire speak reveals nonetheless cleave to the one factor that laid on the basis of the 7,000 episodes I taped, and that’s curiosity.”
Donahue defined, “I nonetheless imagine that, regardless of our variations, we’re all a part of this sprawling international household, and we simply must get to know one another, in order that we will share the world collectively.”
