Phil Donahue Biography

Phillip John Donahue was born on December 21, 1935, in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., into a middle-class Irish Catholic family. His father, Phillip Donahue, was a furniture salesman, while his mother, Catherine nee McClory, was a shoe clerk at a departmental store. They divorced when he was still young.

Phil began his education at Our Lady of Angels Elementary School in Cleveland, eventually graduating from St. Edward High School in 1953. Thereafter, he entered University of Notre Dame with Business Administration, from where he graduated in 1957.

Concurrently with studying for his bachelor’s degree, he also started working at the university-owned WNDU-TV station. It was this experience which shaped his career more than his degree.

In 1957, Phil Donahue began his career with a summer job, joining KYW radio and television station in Cleveland as a production assistant. But soon, he was switched to announcing when one day the regular announcer failed to show up and he successfully filled in his place.

After his stint with KYW, he briefly served as check sorter at Albuquerque National Bank in New Mexico before returning to KYW to become a television announcer. Later, he switched over to WABJ, a local radio station in Adrian, Michigan, and served as its program and news director for ten months.

In 1959, after a brief stint as a stringer for a CBS radio-television affiliate in Dayton, Ohio, he joined WHIO-TV, also in Dayton, as news announcer, serving in this capacity till 1963. Slowly he also started interviewing important personalities like Jimmy Hoffa and Billie Sol Estes, which were picked up nationally.

In 1963, he started anchoring the morning news. Also from the same year, he started hosting Conversation Piece, a phone-in afternoon talk show on WHIO radio. Very soon, he also began to host a business TV talk show and co-anchor the evening news.

All along, he continued to interview prominent people like John F. Kennedy, Johnny Carson, Malcolm X, Jerry Rubin, Pat Nixon, John Elton, Mohammed Ali etc. Very soon, he became famous for his perceptive intervening techniques.

In 1967, he left WHIO to try his hand as a traveling salesperson, selling stamp for E. F. MacDonald Company; but returned to broadcasting when in the same year, he was offered a morning interview show with studio audience by WLWD, another Dayton TV station.

On November 6, 1967, Donahue debuted on DLDW with his The Phil Donahue Show. It was decided that he would have a single guest and one issue per show, his first guest being atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

Shortly, he hit upon a new formula, soliciting the studio audience for questions. It made the show so popular that the station owners started syndicating it to other Midwestern stations from January 1970, reaching 44 cities within two years.

In 1974, Donahue moved his show from Dayton to Chicago, where it was called Donahue. The show was broadcast by WGN till 1984. During this period, he continued to take up topical issue, becoming first to undertake controversial subjects on national television, having an estimated national audience of some eight million people.

In 1979, he published his autobiography, Donahue: My Own Story. Also from 1979, along with holding his own show, he started appearing on NBC's The Today Show as a contributor, continuing to do so till 1988.

In 1982, he made history by participating in the ‘US-Soviet Space Bridge’. In this program, he hosted an audience in America while Vladimir Vladimirovich Pozner hosted an audience in USSR. Two years later, he moved to New York City and started broadcasting his show from there.

All along he continued his association with Pozner and over the time, the two became close friends, enjoying a fruitful relationship. In 1987, his show became the first U.S. talk show to be filmed in the Soviet Union.

In 1992, he reunited with Vladimir Vladimirovich Pozner to co-host Posner/Donahue, a weekly program discussing various issues between the United States and the Soviet Union. Aired on CNBC, it continued till 1995.

By the middle of 1990s, he began to lose viewership to other talk shows, especially those hosted by Geraldo Rivera, Oprah Winfrey and Sally Jessy Raphael. Although Phil Donahue was the inspiration behind these shows, their more lurid format made his show look rather tame.

The final episode of Donahue was aired on September 13, 1996. Thereafter, lack of viewership prompted him to take the program off the air and he went into retirement.

In July 2002, he resurfaced on the television with another show called Donahue on MSNBC. But because of his anti-war views, it was shortly taken off the air, the last episode being aired on February 25, 2003.

In 2007, Donahue co-authored and co-directed documentary film, Body of War, with Ellen Spiro and in 2008 appeared as Santa Killer in one episode of the television series Watching the Detectives.

Starting in 1967, TV show Donahue ran for 29 years before going off the air in 1996. During this period, it aired nearly 7,000 hour-long daily shows, catering to a nationwide audience. Till now, it remains one of the longest continuously run syndicated talk shows in U.S. television history.

In all, Phil Donahue has won ten Emmy Awards, nine among them being Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Talk Show Host (1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986 and 1988). That apart, he was also awarded a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 1996.

In 1980, he received the Peabody Award and in 1987 the "Maggie" Award.

On November 20, 1993, he was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame.

In 1996, he was ranked #42 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.

On February 1, 1958, Donahue married Margaret Cooney The couple had five children, namely, Michael, Kevin, Daniel, Mary Rose, and James with her. The marriage ended in a divorce in 1975.

On May 21, 1980, he married American actress and author, Margaret Julia "Marlo" Thomas. The couple does not have any children.