Phil Donahue, daytime talk show pioneer, dies at age 88

Phil Donahue, the celebrated daytime talk show host who pioneered the television staple, has died, his publicist confirmed to CBS News. He was 88.

Donahue died Sunday night surrounded by his wife, actor Marlo Thomas, and his sister, children and grandchildren, his publicist said in a statement.

He died peacefully after a long illness, the statement said, without providing additional details.

President Biden awarded Donahue the Presidential Medal of Freedom earlier this year. The White House called “Donahue” one of the most influential television programs of its time.

Donahue got his start in broadcasting in the 1950s, working for both TV and radio. He launched “The Phil Donahue Show” in Dayton, Ohio, in 1967 and it was syndicated nationally three years later.

He moved the show in 1974 from Ohio to Chicago. He stayed in the city for about a decade, including a few years using CBS Chicago’s studios as the base of operations for the renamed “Donahue” show.

In 1985, he moved the show to New York, and he was asked if he was worried Chicagoans would resent him for the move.

“I think maybe one of the reasons we’re hot in New York… is that we come from Chicago,” Donahue told the station.

In all, he had had what his publicist, Susie Arons, described as “a staggering 29-year run on the airwaves” totaling some 6,000 episodes, winning him 20 Emmy Awards, a Peabody and induction into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

With a live studio audience, Donahue focused his show on a single guest or topic, and he didn’t stray away from controversy. His first guest was atheist scholar Madalyn Murray O’Hair, and Arons noted that Donahue was the first TV host to feature a person who had AIDS in the early days of the epidemic.

As his audience grew, he interviewed some of the biggest names of the late 20th century, including Muhammad Ali, former President Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela and Gloria Steinem.

“All the feminists somehow seemed to, sooner or later, show up on the ‘Donahue’ show,” Donahue told CBS’ “Sunday Morning” in 2020. “And we were thrilled with that, because they were good guests,” including his wife.

Donahue met Thomas when she was a guest on his show in 1977.

“It really wasn’t an interview,” she told “Sunday Morning.” “And he said to me, ‘How come you’ve never married?’ I said, I just don’t believe it’s for me. It seems like it’s only a place for one-and-a-half persons, you know, the person that has the dream and the other person who supports the dream.”

The couple marked their 40th wedding anniversary in 2020.

“I always say,” Thomas said, “I’m so lucky I married a man who saw the ‘Donahue’ show every day!”