How Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue Met and Fell In Love (2024)

1937-present

Actor Marlo Thomas is best known for her starring roles in the hit TV shows That Girl and Free To Be... You and Me. Following in the footsteps of her father, and entertainer, Thomas began acting in the early 1960s. Her breakout role on That Girl made her a household name, though it was only later revealed she was one of the show’s executive producers in addition to being its star. She was married to former TV talk show host Phil Donahue for more than 40 years and serves as the national outreach director for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which was founded by her father.

FULL NAME: Margaret Thomas
BORN: November 21, 1937
BIRTHPLACE: Deerfield, Michigan
SPOUSE: Phil Donahue (1980-2024)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Scorpio

Margaret Thomas, first nicknamed Margo and then Marlo, was born on November 21, 1937, in Deerfield, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. One of three children of entertainer Danny Thomas and his wife, Rosie, Marlo was raised in Beverly Hills, California. She graduated from the University of Southern California in 1959 and began her acting career a few years later.

An ebullient and perky brunette, Thomas began appearing on such TV shows as 77 Sunset Strip, Bonanza, and The Donna Reed Show in the 1960s. She also had a recurring role on the first season of The Joey Bishop Show from 1961 to 1962.>

Breakout Role in That Girl

Her career took off when she landed the lead on a new series called That Girl in 1966. On the hit sitcom, she played aspiring actor and model Ann Marie, an independent, career-oriented woman learning to make it on her own in New York City with a little help from her boyfriend, Donald Hollinger (Ted Bessell), and her father, Lou Marie (Lew Parker). The show made Thomas a household name and earned her the Best Female TV Star Golden Globe in 1967. It was later revealed that the trailblazing Thomas was also an executive producer on the show.

Free to Be...You and Me

After That Girl ended in 1971, Thomas produced and starred in the children’s TV special Free to Be... You and Me (1974), which was based on a 1972 album that also inspired a book. The show celebrated diversity and open expression and featured an all-star cast that included Alan Alda, Harry Belafonte, Mel Brooks, Roberta Flack, Michael Jackson, and Kris Kristofferson. Free to Be won an Emmy Award, Thomas’ first after multiple nominations for That Girl.

Guest Roles on Friends and More

Thomas continued to make occasional screen appearances throughout the ’70s and ’80s. She won another Emmy in 1986 for Nobody’s Child. In the TV film, Thomas portrayed real-life figure Marie Balter, an institutionalized woman who was able to find her way to sanity and a healthy life. The esteemed Thomas won another Emmy for 1989’s Free to Be... a Family, which revisited themes of the 1974 Free to Be program and specifically forged social links with the children of Russia.

From the ’90s into the new millennium, Thomas appeared as a guest star on shows like Roseanne, Frasier, Law & Order: SVU, and Ugly Betty. In 1996, she received yet another Emmy nomination for her role as the mother of Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston) on the hit sitcom Friends.

In 2010, Thomas launched the AOL/General Mills online program Mondays With Marlo, a successful half-hour talk show aimed toward women over 35 that featured discussions with celebrities like Suze Orman and Chelsea Clinton. The actor was also involved in a few TV and film projects in the late 2010s, appearing in the Netflix series Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later in 2017 and the heist comedy Ocean’s 8 the following year.

Thomas first ventured into theater in 1965, joining the London production of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, which ran for a year. She made her Broadway debut in the 1974 Herb Gardner play Thieves, also appearing in the movie version in 1977. Another Broadway turn came with the 1986 domestic comedy Social Security, directed by Mike Nichols and co-starring Olympia Dukakis and Ron Silver. She later appeared in the one-act play George Is Dead (2011).

Beyond acting, Thomas has also penned several best-selling books, among them Free to Be... a Family: A Book About All Kinds of Belonging (1987), The Right Words at the Right Time (2002), and her 2010 memoir, Growing Up Laughing.

In 2020, Thomas and her husband, former talk show host Phil Donahue, teamed up to publish What Makes a Marriage Last: 40 Celebrated Couples Share with Us the Secrets to a Happy Life, featuring interviews with high-profile couples like Billy and Janice Crystal and Elton John and David Furnish.

Thomas met her husband Phil Donahue on his talk show The Phil Donahue Show. The couple married in 1980 and were together for 44 years until his death in mid-August 2024.

Thomas is active in charity work for her late father’s favorite cause, the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, which he founded in 1962. She currently serves at the charity’s national outreach director.

Beyond her Emmys and Golden Globe, Thomas has earned a Peabody and a Grammy and was inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame. For her activism, Thomas has received an array of honors, including the Helen Caldicott Award for Nuclear Disarmament, the American Women in Radio and Television Satellite Award, and the William Kunstler Racial Justice Award.

In 2014, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama.

• I think the legacy of That Girl is the fact that, as Billy Persky always says, we threw the grenade into the bunker. We opened up the window for young women. You did not have to be the wife or the daughter of somebody or the secretary of somebody, but that you could be the somebody. The story could be about you and what you wanted in life. Once that happened, I think that really paved the way for a lot of other shows.
• What they talk about on [the series] Friends, we were doing in the ’60s—we just weren’t talking about it, you know.

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