Phil Donahue

Phillip John Donahue was born on December 21, 1935, in Cleveland, Ohio, into a middle class Irish Catholic family. His father, Phillip Donahue, was a furniture sales clerk, and his mother, Catherine (née McClory), was a department store shoe clerk. He grew up in Cleveland and graduated from Our Lady of Angels Elementary School in the city's West Park neighbourhood in 1949.

In 1953 Donahue was part of the very first graduating class of St. Edward High School, an all-boys Catholic college preparatory school in Lakewood, Ohio. He then studied at the University of Notre Dame, graduating with a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1957. He remained closely tied to Notre Dame for life, and after his death his family named the Phil Donahue/Notre Dame Scholarship Fund as one of two causes for memorial gifts.

Donahue started in 1957 as a production assistant at KYW radio and television in Cleveland, stepping in as announcer one day when the regular announcer did not show up. After a short stint as a bank cheque sorter in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he became program director of WABJ radio in Adrian, Michigan, then a stringer for the CBS Evening News and the morning news anchor at WHIO-TV in Dayton, Ohio. His Dayton interviews with Jimmy Hoffa and Billie Sol Estes were carried nationally, and from 1963 to 1967 he hosted the phone-in talk show Conversation Piece on WHIO radio, speaking with figures including John F. Kennedy, Johnny Carson, Malcolm X and anti-Vietnam War campaigners such as Jerry Rubin.

On November 6, 1967, he launched The Phil Donahue Show on WLWD (now WDTN) in Dayton. Initially seen only on Crosley Broadcasting (later Avco) stations, it went into national syndication in January 1970, moved to Chicago in 1974 and to New York City in 1985. Its format, with Donahue roaming the studio audience and inviting viewers to question guests, became the template for daytime talk television. Across 29 years, 26 of them in syndication, and nearly 7,000 hour-long episodes, the show took on abortion, consumer rights, civil rights, sexuality, religion and war. The final original episode aired on September 13, 1996. He was also a contributor to NBC's Today show from 1979 to 1988.

In the 1980s he co-hosted the U.S.-Soviet Space Bridge broadcasts with Soviet journalist Vladimir Pozner, the first programs of their kind, joining live audiences in American and Soviet cities. The pair went on to co-host Pozner/Donahue, a weekly issues roundtable on CNBC and in syndication, from 1991 to 1994.

In July 2002 Donahue returned after seven years of retirement with a new Donahue show on MSNBC. It was cancelled on February 25, 2003. In 2006 he co-directed the documentary Body of War with Ellen Spiro, following disabled Iraq War veteran Tomas Young; in November 2007 it was named one of fifteen documentaries in consideration for an Oscar nomination.

In 1958 Donahue married Margaret Cooney. They had five children, Michael, Kevin, Daniel, Mary Rose and James, and lived for a time in Centerville, Ohio, across the street from the humorist Erma Bombeck. For a brief period in the 1970s the family employed the photographer Vivian Maier as a nanny, and Donahue was later interviewed for the documentary Finding Vivian Maier (2013). He and Margaret divorced in 1975, after which she returned to New Mexico.

Donahue married the actress Marlo Thomas on May 21, 1980. They had no children together and were married for 44 years. In 1988 Thomas created Free to Be... A Family, a children's program inspired by the Space Bridge idea. In August 2014 his youngest son, James, died suddenly at the age of 51 from a ruptured aortic aneurysm.

Donahue was an outspoken liberal voice on television. He campaigned for Ralph Nader, his most frequent guest, in the 2000 presidential election, and he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He later said MSNBC had required two conservative guests for every liberal, adding, "I was counted as two liberals." In 2013 he appeared in a video supporting Chelsea Manning, and in 2016 he spoke at Nader's Breaking Through Power conference in Washington, D.C.

On religion he said: "I will always be a Catholic. But I want my church to join the human race and finally walk away from this anti-sexual theology." He described himself as not a very good Catholic and expressed admiration for Pope Francis. In 1987 he received the Maggie Award, the highest honour of the Planned Parenthood Federation.

Often called the king of daytime talk, Donahue is credited with creating the audience participation format that shaped decades of television. Oprah Winfrey said, "If it weren't for Phil Donahue, there would never have been an Oprah Show." In 1996 TV Guide ranked him No. 42 on its list of the 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time. Ralph Nader called him the greatest defender and enabler of the First Amendment right of free speech in 20th century America. In 2020 he was portrayed by Tom O'Keefe in the television series Mrs. America.

Donahue received 20 Daytime Emmy nominations and won eight for Outstanding Talk Show Host for The Phil Donahue Show. He also received a Daytime Emmy Special Recognition Award in 1993 and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996. He won a Peabody Award in 1980 and was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame on November 20, 1993. Planned Parenthood gave him its Maggie Award in 1987. On May 3, 2024, President Joe Biden awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the United States.

Donahue published his autobiography, Donahue: My Own Story, in 1979. With Marlo Thomas he co-wrote What Makes a Marriage Last (2020). He co-directed the documentary Body of War (2006) and appears in Finding Vivian Maier (2013). His long oral history interview for the Television Academy Foundation, The Interviews: An Oral History of Television, remains a key record of his career.

Donahue's MSNBC show was cancelled on February 25, 2003. Soon afterwards a leaked internal memo said he would be a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war" and that his program could become "a home for the liberal anti-war agenda." Donahue later told Democracy Now! that the network had been frozen by the antiwar voice and that the show was not good for business.

Phil Donahue died peacefully on the night of Sunday, August 18, 2024, at his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, following a long illness. He was 88. In a statement first reported by TODAY, his family said he was surrounded by his wife of 44 years, Marlo Thomas, his sister, his children, his grandchildren and his golden retriever, Charlie. No cause of death was made public. Thomas wrote on Instagram that she had lost her sweetheart and would step away from social media for a while. The family asked that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital or the Phil Donahue/Notre Dame Scholarship Fund.