What Makes a Marriage Last: 40 Celebrated Couples Share with Us the Secrets to a Happy Life

Power couple Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue have created a compelling and intimate collection of intriguing conversations with famous couples about their enduring marriages and how they have made them last through the challenges we all share.

What makes a marriage last? Who doesn’t want to know the answer to that question? To unlock this mystery, long-married icons Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue turned to forty celebrated couples whose long marriages they’ve admired—from award-winning actors, athletes and newsmakers, to writers, comedians, musicians, and a former U.S. president.

Marlo and Phil are a beloved couple who have been married for forty years, yet have rarely spoken publicly about their relationship, and have never written a book together. Now, for the first time, they also include the secrets to what has kept their own marriage alive and loving.

Inspiring and insightful, What Makes a Marriage Last offers practical and hard-won wisdom for couples of all ages. Learn about soul-deep passion from Sting and Trudy Styler; how Billy and Janice Crystal keep the love and laughter alive; and why Judges Judy and Jerry Sheinlin’s divorce didn’t last but their marriage did. Also included in this impressive collection: Arlene and Alan Alda, Elton John and David Furnish, John McEnroe and Patty Smyth, George Stephanopoulos and Ali Wentworth, Lisa and Mehmet Oz, Bob Woodward and Elsa Walsh, and Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, who take the prize as the book’s longest married couple—seventy-four years, and counting.

What Makes a Marriage Last includes forty-three black-and-white and color photos throughout the book and on the endpapers.