April 12, 2021 • 30 mins
Ted was a self-proclaimed “hot mess” in 1994 when he met Mary in a cast meeting for the film “Pontiac Moon.” During our magical visit to their Santa Monica bungalow, we hear how Mary’s calm energy turned this conflicted playboy into a self-aware and deeply-committed husband, and how an early canoe ride down the Mendocino River became a fitting metaphor for their life together.
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin. Hi. I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlowe Thomas, and
we're going on a series of double dates to find
out what makes a marriage. Last we flew out to
(00:40):
Santa Monica to visit Ted Danson and Mary steam Bergin.
Their house is carved into the side of a hill.
It's a craftsman style bungalow built in nineteen twenty two,
and it has what is called a living roof, which
is covered with greenery to fight off climate change. Ted
and Mary decorated it themselves. It's very relaxed and homy. Mostly,
(01:02):
it was their warm connection to each other that grabbed
our attention from the start. Yeah, we've been so excited.
We're really honored that you asked us. Yeah, well you
came to mind immediately. You know, really, people are always
asking us, how did you? How are you married? So long?
On what? I like him? He likes me. Yeah, he's cute.
(01:24):
I like the way he smells. That is that's a
big deal. That's why. Yeah good. Ted likes to play
the rascal. But once we settled at their farm style
kitchen table and began to talk, he was so honest
and vulnerable. Well, the four of us here, I'm the
only one who's only married once. Oh yes, I'm the
(01:46):
third time being married. Well that maybe that's an interesting
way to start, so great, because either you're a wild
optimist or you're in total denial. I mean, I got
married in college at Carnegie halfway through, and I think
it's fair to say the real communication would have been
(02:11):
I'm afraid to go to New York by myself, are you?
Oh well, let's go share an apartment and be buddies.
That would have been kind of the emotional truth. But
somehow we ended up getting married and twenty two and
married for five years. Good friends but certainly not you know,
(02:33):
a marriage, and then got divorced and married again and
had children, but still a huge level of unconsciousness on
my part, and that lasted fifteen years. I mean, my
life was incredibly messy, but underneath there was a lot
(02:54):
of work going on where I was trying to stop
being a liar and wake up and were lying about
everything pretty much. It was not hugely faithful. I'll leave
it at that. So I did all this work on myself.
But by the time we met, I was convinced I
(03:14):
was incapable of having a relationship that I wouldn't mess up.
This was back in nineteen ninety four when both of
them were cast in a film called pontiag Moon. And
just like when I first met you, Ted was drawn
to Mary immediately. And what was it about her? When
you cast in apart together, you have an excuse to
(03:36):
look at somebody in the eye, whereas otherwise I'm kind
of shy. We're about to work together, so you you're
supposed to know each other, so you share. And I
was like, I said, a hot mess, and so I
shared my life with her on that first night, and
it was very clear nothing was possibly going to happen
because how nutty I was and Mary wasn't looking to
(03:58):
be in a relationship. So it really started off friends
until halfway through the production we took a canoe ride.
Jump in here. I don't want to do a monologue, okay,
all right, So we were playing this kind of nineteen
sixties kind of It was a very strange film. But
(04:21):
we're not going to have a relationship Mary and I
because that's clear. But we should do something fun and
kind of old fashioned romantic, because that's kind of what
the film was like. By then, I knew that. When
I showed up at lunch and somebody else was sitting
next to Mary, the part of me was like a
little grumpy that I hadn't got there in time to
sit next door. But then we took the canoe ride
(04:43):
and it was this big title river called the Mendocino River,
big river, and we got into a canoe that had
an outrigger. It was just a beautiful canoe and there
was a group of three or four other people going
up and we outdistanced them quickly and we just kept
going around the next bend. It was always Merry in
(05:06):
the front to me in the back, effortlessly paddling, which
is you learn a lot, I think in a canoe.
And there was very little conversation except when it was
right sea Otter's Blue herons. Yeah, it was just it
was just magically beautiful and totally in sync and peaceful
(05:28):
and at ease. And I think on the way down
we stopped to have a little bite on the corner
of the side of the river and but you kept
wanting to turn around. Oh. That was kind of a
for our wedding. That part of our bows was a
poem about that canoe ride. It was really kind of
like a charter for our marriage about look, you know,
(05:51):
finding the truth in each other's eyes. And but Mary
has in our entire life been the person that goes, oh,
let's let's go around the next band to come out,
let's let's do this. I'm usually the one going, oh,
I don't you know, I think we should. We're fine,
we should. And she's always the one that gets me
to go around the next kind of curve in life
(06:12):
and yeah, yeah, no, it is. Hey, we're maddling love.
I am um feel so blessed on every level, from
as deeply spiritual as you can get to to the
more shallow and whatever. M we really do celebrate how
lucky we are a lot. Were you a little scared?
(06:36):
I got scared? You did. We had one moment We're
got really scared because we lived very differently. I lived
in an old farmhouse in Ohio and had a very
small life except I would go off and occasionally do
a movie. But I couldn't even do that very often
(06:58):
because I was a single parent and I didn't want
to leave my kids, you know. And I've always been
a little shy of being out there being talked about
I don't need that. I love being an actor, but
I didn't do it because I need to be the
(07:19):
person in front of the flashbulbs. I like being in
front of the camera, but I don't like my life
being out there and his was all out there and
so but because I was being messy, yeah, but it
scared me. It scared me. And I was just scared
because I'm so protective of my children as a mother,
(07:40):
Like what, I don't want to make a bad choice,
and so it was scary, you know. But here's what
I found. I found this weird thing that you can
go Your brain can say no, no, no, I can't
do this, no, no, no, this is I need to
walk away from this, and your brain can say whatever
(08:02):
it says. But it's I found. And this is not
an intentional pun. But my soul was in my feet.
My feet, sometimes very hesitantly, sometimes more surely, walked toward him,
and no matter what my head was doing, that's what
(08:25):
I found myself doing. And so it was like, I
can only assume that was the voice of my soul
because my brain, my brain was not that simple, you know.
My brain was like, well, especially a guy who had
been married twice. Yeah, you would think, well, is he
going to be able to do this? Yeah? I will. Also,
(08:46):
I had told myself because I had just ended a
relationship right before I met him, and it was really
not a good relationship at all, and we were both
very much not right for each other. And and I
had just told all of my friends, guess what, I'm
(09:08):
not relationships, and I look like I would be, but
in fact I'm not, and I'm I'm done. I have
two beautiful children. I'm done. I'm not putting myself through
this anymore. And then I met him. I was smitten.
I was smitten without because my life was so complicated,
(09:29):
I didn't think to do something about that, but I
couldn't wait to be around her, literally everybody. I don't
know if I felt that right away. It was such
a crazy time for me, and everything for me got
filtered through my two kids. So were they at this time?
They were ten and twelve. Yeah that's young. And then
(09:52):
I just started noticing whenever we were all as a
cask going out to dinner or doing something when he
wasn't there. It was like, oh, okay, a little disappointed,
So it's snug up on me and it just kept
(10:12):
being becoming more and more and more undeniable that I
wanted to be around him. And also just the more
I got to know him, the more I saw in
spite of everything that was going on, I saw what
a fine human being this is, you know, and and
(10:34):
so different than I thought because I had an image
of him that, even though it's stupid, I sort of
bought into Sam Malone, even though I should know better.
I'm an actor. But that was a long time that show,
and I was a big fan of this show, and
I started to think, oh, he's probably super slick guy,
(10:58):
you know. And my joke is that I was wrong,
because slick guys don't say gosha room after making love. That'slious.
But but I mean Ted was raised with the Hopie
(11:19):
Navajo people and ranchers kids outside of Flagstaff, Arizona. Spent
his mornings riding bareback on a horse, you know, across
the desert with his friend Raymond, who was Navajo or
Hobi Hopie, and that he had the most exotic American childhood.
(11:44):
And once I started meeting his family and seeing like
all the pieces that made up this person, it was like, Wow,
he's so not who I thought he was not at all.
And I mean for me, his tenderness towards my children
and now our grandchildren would be a reason alone to
(12:07):
love him. Yeah, did you make an accommodation that you
could talk about to accommodate the My changes came before
I met Mary. I mean, I had a mentor who
walked me through a lot of my stuff that I
was going through as soon as I had kind of
woken up, the gift of my life was standing there.
(12:29):
And but this habit you had of lying, let's say, right,
did you notice yourself saying to yourself, I'm not going
to do that here, I'm not gonna I do remember
one moment where, early on before we were engaged, even
that I started to do a version of push pull
(12:50):
and I looked at Mary. It didn't register on her face.
She didn't play that game. She didn't even nibble at
whatever this little thing I was, you know, doing. So
I was like, oh, because I don't have to do
that anymore. You know, this person doesn't even know this
stupid dance, right, I won't have to do that dance anymore.
(13:12):
For me, I had a big accommodation to make. I
was a single woman with no children, and I married
a man who lived with four sons. Then I was
very flattered because he would say to people, Marlo's the
first person I've ever known that knows the difference between
each of them and can talk to each of them differently.
And I had good relationships with them all. There is
(13:35):
no book that tells you how to do it. And
the one thing I figured out right away for me
that worked. I don't know if it works for everybody
is they have a mom, it's not me. What do
they need from me? Like what is safe and fair
to give to do as far as being a stepparent,
(13:58):
And then I thought, well, man, everybody needs a cheerleader.
There's no Mary Potts. No, there is no amthe no no.
Uh you know to get that, Yeah, and you just
have to hope. Yeah, you know, you know, I mean,
(14:19):
we've made a good lord. We're you know, we have
bumps and ups and downs, and you know I all
the time, but ninety percent of the time we want
to have fun and be happy. But you know we'll
do drama if we have to do a little bit. Well,
our motto is the only drama we like. Is that
that we're paid for. I look at Mary and go.
(14:42):
We can be in the middle of an argument and
I can trust, even with anger in the air, that
if I look at my stuff, she will look at
her stuff, or vice versa, that she is trustworthy to
see her part in any situation. It feels a lot
better to point over there and say you're wrong, and
(15:04):
this is what you've done to me, and I'm a victim,
and it feels so much better than to go, Okay,
here's my hab. I'm going to own up to it.
I mean, where's the fun in that? But the fact
that you do it is magic. We'll have more After
(15:29):
a quick break, we're back to our conversation with Ted
Danson and Mary steam Ergin. They've been together nearly thirty years,
(15:49):
so Marlowe wanted to know what happens when they hit
a rough spot. You do have to have something in
the bank to get you through those moments, and I
do have trust that on the other end of this
my wife. You know, if I walk away in the
middle of a fight and go, there's a voice going,
do you really think that your wife is not crazy?
See about you and love you? And I have to
(16:11):
go No, of course she does, you know, So there
there's something good about having a history of getting through,
a history of love, a history of knowing she loves you.
But yeah, usually it's for me. It's about finally telling
the truth that I don't want to tell, whether it's
I'm angry, I'm angry irrational at you. And if I
(16:34):
tell you I'm angry at this, then then how can
we be? You know, I grew up with a mother
who was unbelievable about the giving, the caring, the loving,
the nurturing. You're in pain, let me you know. She
could be with people dying, people came to her. But
anything negative, a negative thought, a selfish, petty, angry thought,
(17:00):
was intolerable. She would almost get sick, as you know,
she'd have a cold, the flu. As opposed to dealing
with her angers. You know, anything that was dealing with
anger for you was hard huge still is you know
or anything where I mean we just said, both of
us for different, very different reasons. We both had come
(17:25):
from families where there was it was it was fully loaded.
That anger was scary, you know, both of us, And
and that was one of the things before I met him,
I recognized him myself. I realized it. I first went
to therapy and the first thing I learned on day
(17:47):
one was how how I had not been able to
express anger, that there was no room for it, no
place for it, that it was not appropriate in my life.
And for real, yeah, I came from I didn't mean
to interrupt you, no, no, I mean my dad was
(18:09):
a freight train conductor and I grew up in Arkansas,
and that would have been a nice, little middle class
family except that my dad, when I was eight years old,
was diagnosed diagnosed with heart disease, and in those days,
(18:30):
they they dealt with it in very weird ways. He
was basically told, you can't work, you can't hunt, you
can't fish, you can't drive, you can't make love to
your wife, you can't They took everything you can eat,
no problem with bacon, oh my god, you know. Like,
and my dad was one of these people that would
(18:51):
do exactly what his doctor told him, so, you know
his basically they gave him not much reason to live,
but that was supposed to keep him alive. And so
when the doctor told us, I was there with my mother,
(19:12):
and the doctors looked at us, and I remember him
looking at me and saying, now you'd be a good girl.
Now you know your daddy needs you to be a
good girl and keep everything quiet and you know, and
basically the eight year old went, I get it. I
can't ignoise, I can't do anything wrong, I can't make
(19:33):
a mistake, or my dad's going to die. Got it?
Oh my god. And it was backed up with eight
heart attack. And then my dad proceeded to have heart attack,
a heart attack, and during that time he couldn't work.
So we became, you know, we struggled. Yeah, and so
uh so my mother became it was it was always
(19:58):
looking at your dad to see if he's really one
hundred percent of the time. That was my childhood. And
then he would have a heart attack, like one was
when I got to be one. You know that I
knew what I had done to cause each one. So
the good news about that story is that my world
(20:18):
that was safe was books. Just by reading. Emotions were suppressed. Yeah,
but not in books. In books, it was like and
my favorite as a child, like my hero was Pippi Longstocking,
who was like wild and redheaded and wore shoes too
big for self, social gwiggler toes and you know, I
(20:42):
loved all that because it was the opposite of what
I was being. So when you got a hold of
your anger when you went to all this therapy on
day one of therapy, which was when I was twenty
four years old, and this woman on day one goes,
oh my god, well, no wonder you became an actress.
(21:03):
Of course, that's your safe place, that's the way, you know.
And so learning how to be a fully actualized human
being that actually could experience things other than sweet Southern smiles,
you know, that was a huge thing for me. And
(21:24):
I think for a while I got angry too quickly.
It's like a the switch was too It was maladjusted,
all of them, you know. And part of what I've
had to learn to do is just be centered with it. Well,
let me do have a real fight. We have had
(21:44):
some huntingers and I've accused him before a fight. I said,
your ma, your main like a junkyard dog and um.
But the truth is we both hate it. So if
you had to say, what's the foundation that makes a
(22:06):
marriage last other than love, I would say truth and laughter. Yeah,
honestly those two things for us. And the hard work
part is tell the truth. Yeah, because that's that's that's
uncomfortable at times. Yeah. What what when is it uncomfortable
to tell the truth when it's not going to feel
(22:26):
good to the other person, or when it's going to
make you look bad, or when you've done something that
you you know, I'm going to have to tell Mary. Shoot,
you know, because now I can't ride in on my
white horse and be wonderful and noble. I'm an asshole
and I just proved it. Now I'm gonna have to
share this with me. Why do you have to share
it with Mary because otherwise I well, the because we
(22:52):
kind of have an agreement unspoken or spoken agreement to
share it, to not have secrets. So it's not that
I need to share it to get blessing or permission
or something. I need to share it so I don't
have this little inside of me people, And I think
these are really ruicy secrets. Whatever it is. Now, I know,
(23:13):
did you have secrets in the beginning? No? No, I
think that's what was unique about the relationship for each
of us. I'd never not had secrets. I'd been full
of secrets, But for us, I think we had both
kind of had enough of secrets. You know, we had
both lived that way and it had caused us to
(23:38):
feel alone in life. You know, he knows my warts.
He knows exactly how smart or not smart, or kind
or not kind, or how impatient a person I am.
He knows all that. Sometimes it's not that there's a
secret between you, that there's a sadness that you haven't
looked at inside of yourself that you you know, hey,
(24:01):
i'm getting older. This I'm feeling sad about getting older,
and I'm embarrassed to tell you that I'm dead. All
that's good, all those things from But I think also
and no, two people would be more perfect to say this,
dude than you two as famous people, the world either
(24:22):
criticizes a romanticize issue. There's not it's rare or doable. Yeah,
it's rare that they would just like your realness and
here you are very imperfect person. That's if I had
to say, the thing we're most protective of in life,
it's that we keep it real. So that and and
(24:43):
I and I, you know, you also recognize in people.
For me, it's like my mother had a lot of things.
It was complicated, but there were so many wonderful things
about her that I see and marry. You know, there's
a deep kindness and caring, you know, about people. I
don't think I could be with somebody who didn't feel
(25:05):
that way. We had a divine intervention and here we are.
But but but it's also but these are little pigs along
the way that you've said that it's it's it feels
like magic, but it isn't, because there are these things
that you count on each other for. I completely count
(25:26):
on Phil. And I'm not what one would call a
needy little person, but I need something from him, many things.
But one of the things that I need is when
I'm when I go down, when I get blue about
all of these things, you know, out of work, i'm
getting older, whatever it is that I choose to be
blue about that day, only Phil can can bring me back.
(25:53):
And I'm from Hollywood, so I know a bullshitter when
I see one, you know, what he says to me,
you know, it's just it's immediately I respond to it,
you know, and I come back. He waters my plant,
you know, and I come back, you know, so and
I count on it. Gratitude is huge for me, you know. Yeah,
(26:19):
it's okay to be wanting more and different bees, be
grateful and celebrate. You know. The first thing I wrote
in an autobiography I wrote in nineteen seventy eight. The
first line is if I could start over as a parent,
and I wish I could. When my children please me,
(26:40):
I would tell them it's tough because when you how
old were you? When? At what age are you talking about?
For yourself? When you didn't when you all of a
sudden had four sons by your son twenty seven? Wow,
smack dab into Can I carve out a place in
the world? Can I do this? So you're so forward looking?
(27:03):
It's also in a show every day, But parenting is
a lousy job for a perfectionists or to even have
satisfaction because it's just everybody's doing the best they can.
You know, Can I add one thing and no be
(27:23):
quiet ed? Um? I My my form of seduction early
in life was to find the person's gaping hole in
their personality or their being and then fill it and
become indispensable to them. You know. So I know a
lot of guys like you. So I was like around
(27:47):
a lot of kind of broken wing, wounded kind of people,
and don't do that you know, find somebody who's playing
at the same level you are. That's that's actually find
somebody that likes being who they are. Yes, that's better. Yeah,
that's great, But that's also very interesting. What you're saying
(28:07):
is great that the find somebody who likes who they are. Yes,
that's They might not think they're perfect, it might need help,
man then, but they basically they're not running from who
they are. Life is not a series of pointing fingers
and blaming. So you're not going to be the one
(28:27):
to save them. No, you're not. You're going to change.
That's what's great about the book. Every will. You're not
going to change somebody. You'll never fix the broken wing.
I met somebody who is so happy being herself. She
needed me to show up and be me and be real,
but she didn't need me to fix her. And I've
done a lot of fixing, which leads to anger. You know. Inequality, Yeah,
(28:52):
inequality patronizing, and it's horrible when you think you're the
person fixing somebody else. It sucks and it's terrible to them,
it's terrible to you. And you know, find somebody you
don't have to fix. Great when we're in love and
then two and communicative and laughing in life. When we're
(29:12):
that how we are most of the time, it is
truly divine. It is it is heaven on earth. That's
Ted Danson and Mary Steam Virgin. They sure we're fun
and so in love with each other. It was pretty
idea like I would be jealous, but I have you.
You most certainly do until next time. I'm Phil Donnie
(29:36):
and I'm Marlow Thomas. Okay, I win. What you should
do is leave one of the mics on when you're
leaving those two pretending that they like each other. Double
Data is a production of Pushkin Industries. The show was
(29:59):
created by US and produced by Sarah Lily. Michael Bahari
is associate producer. Musical adaptations of It Had to Be
You by Sellwagen, Simfinette, Marlo and I are executive producers,
along with Mia Lobel and Letal Molad from Pushkin. Special
thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Malcolm Gladwell, Hither Fame, John Snars,
(30:25):
Carl Migliori, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostek, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams,
and Bruce Kluger. If you like our show, please remember
to share, rate and review Thanks for listening
Pushkin. Hi. I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlowe Thomas, and
we're going on a series of double dates to find
out what makes a marriage. Last we flew out to
(00:40):
Santa Monica to visit Ted Danson and Mary steam Bergin.
Their house is carved into the side of a hill.
It's a craftsman style bungalow built in nineteen twenty two,
and it has what is called a living roof, which
is covered with greenery to fight off climate change. Ted
and Mary decorated it themselves. It's very relaxed and homy. Mostly,
(01:02):
it was their warm connection to each other that grabbed
our attention from the start. Yeah, we've been so excited.
We're really honored that you asked us. Yeah, well you
came to mind immediately. You know, really, people are always
asking us, how did you? How are you married? So long?
On what? I like him? He likes me. Yeah, he's cute.
(01:24):
I like the way he smells. That is that's a
big deal. That's why. Yeah good. Ted likes to play
the rascal. But once we settled at their farm style
kitchen table and began to talk, he was so honest
and vulnerable. Well, the four of us here, I'm the
only one who's only married once. Oh yes, I'm the
(01:46):
third time being married. Well that maybe that's an interesting
way to start, so great, because either you're a wild
optimist or you're in total denial. I mean, I got
married in college at Carnegie halfway through, and I think
it's fair to say the real communication would have been
(02:11):
I'm afraid to go to New York by myself, are you?
Oh well, let's go share an apartment and be buddies.
That would have been kind of the emotional truth. But
somehow we ended up getting married and twenty two and
married for five years. Good friends but certainly not you know,
(02:33):
a marriage, and then got divorced and married again and
had children, but still a huge level of unconsciousness on
my part, and that lasted fifteen years. I mean, my
life was incredibly messy, but underneath there was a lot
(02:54):
of work going on where I was trying to stop
being a liar and wake up and were lying about
everything pretty much. It was not hugely faithful. I'll leave
it at that. So I did all this work on myself.
But by the time we met, I was convinced I
(03:14):
was incapable of having a relationship that I wouldn't mess up.
This was back in nineteen ninety four when both of
them were cast in a film called pontiag Moon. And
just like when I first met you, Ted was drawn
to Mary immediately. And what was it about her? When
you cast in apart together, you have an excuse to
(03:36):
look at somebody in the eye, whereas otherwise I'm kind
of shy. We're about to work together, so you you're
supposed to know each other, so you share. And I
was like, I said, a hot mess, and so I
shared my life with her on that first night, and
it was very clear nothing was possibly going to happen
because how nutty I was and Mary wasn't looking to
(03:58):
be in a relationship. So it really started off friends
until halfway through the production we took a canoe ride.
Jump in here. I don't want to do a monologue, okay,
all right, So we were playing this kind of nineteen
sixties kind of It was a very strange film. But
(04:21):
we're not going to have a relationship Mary and I
because that's clear. But we should do something fun and
kind of old fashioned romantic, because that's kind of what
the film was like. By then, I knew that. When
I showed up at lunch and somebody else was sitting
next to Mary, the part of me was like a
little grumpy that I hadn't got there in time to
sit next door. But then we took the canoe ride
(04:43):
and it was this big title river called the Mendocino River,
big river, and we got into a canoe that had
an outrigger. It was just a beautiful canoe and there
was a group of three or four other people going
up and we outdistanced them quickly and we just kept
going around the next bend. It was always Merry in
(05:06):
the front to me in the back, effortlessly paddling, which
is you learn a lot, I think in a canoe.
And there was very little conversation except when it was
right sea Otter's Blue herons. Yeah, it was just it
was just magically beautiful and totally in sync and peaceful
(05:28):
and at ease. And I think on the way down
we stopped to have a little bite on the corner
of the side of the river and but you kept
wanting to turn around. Oh. That was kind of a
for our wedding. That part of our bows was a
poem about that canoe ride. It was really kind of
like a charter for our marriage about look, you know,
(05:51):
finding the truth in each other's eyes. And but Mary
has in our entire life been the person that goes, oh,
let's let's go around the next band to come out,
let's let's do this. I'm usually the one going, oh,
I don't you know, I think we should. We're fine,
we should. And she's always the one that gets me
to go around the next kind of curve in life
(06:12):
and yeah, yeah, no, it is. Hey, we're maddling love.
I am um feel so blessed on every level, from
as deeply spiritual as you can get to to the
more shallow and whatever. M we really do celebrate how
lucky we are a lot. Were you a little scared?
(06:36):
I got scared? You did. We had one moment We're
got really scared because we lived very differently. I lived
in an old farmhouse in Ohio and had a very
small life except I would go off and occasionally do
a movie. But I couldn't even do that very often
(06:58):
because I was a single parent and I didn't want
to leave my kids, you know. And I've always been
a little shy of being out there being talked about
I don't need that. I love being an actor, but
I didn't do it because I need to be the
(07:19):
person in front of the flashbulbs. I like being in
front of the camera, but I don't like my life
being out there and his was all out there and
so but because I was being messy, yeah, but it
scared me. It scared me. And I was just scared
because I'm so protective of my children as a mother,
(07:40):
Like what, I don't want to make a bad choice,
and so it was scary, you know. But here's what
I found. I found this weird thing that you can
go Your brain can say no, no, no, I can't
do this, no, no, no, this is I need to
walk away from this, and your brain can say whatever
(08:02):
it says. But it's I found. And this is not
an intentional pun. But my soul was in my feet.
My feet, sometimes very hesitantly, sometimes more surely, walked toward him,
and no matter what my head was doing, that's what
(08:25):
I found myself doing. And so it was like, I
can only assume that was the voice of my soul
because my brain, my brain was not that simple, you know.
My brain was like, well, especially a guy who had
been married twice. Yeah, you would think, well, is he
going to be able to do this? Yeah? I will. Also,
(08:46):
I had told myself because I had just ended a
relationship right before I met him, and it was really
not a good relationship at all, and we were both
very much not right for each other. And and I
had just told all of my friends, guess what, I'm
(09:08):
not relationships, and I look like I would be, but
in fact I'm not, and I'm I'm done. I have
two beautiful children. I'm done. I'm not putting myself through
this anymore. And then I met him. I was smitten.
I was smitten without because my life was so complicated,
(09:29):
I didn't think to do something about that, but I
couldn't wait to be around her, literally everybody. I don't
know if I felt that right away. It was such
a crazy time for me, and everything for me got
filtered through my two kids. So were they at this time?
They were ten and twelve. Yeah that's young. And then
(09:52):
I just started noticing whenever we were all as a
cask going out to dinner or doing something when he
wasn't there. It was like, oh, okay, a little disappointed,
So it's snug up on me and it just kept
(10:12):
being becoming more and more and more undeniable that I
wanted to be around him. And also just the more
I got to know him, the more I saw in
spite of everything that was going on, I saw what
a fine human being this is, you know, and and
(10:34):
so different than I thought because I had an image
of him that, even though it's stupid, I sort of
bought into Sam Malone, even though I should know better.
I'm an actor. But that was a long time that show,
and I was a big fan of this show, and
I started to think, oh, he's probably super slick guy,
(10:58):
you know. And my joke is that I was wrong,
because slick guys don't say gosha room after making love. That'slious.
But but I mean Ted was raised with the Hopie
(11:19):
Navajo people and ranchers kids outside of Flagstaff, Arizona. Spent
his mornings riding bareback on a horse, you know, across
the desert with his friend Raymond, who was Navajo or
Hobi Hopie, and that he had the most exotic American childhood.
(11:44):
And once I started meeting his family and seeing like
all the pieces that made up this person, it was like, Wow,
he's so not who I thought he was not at all.
And I mean for me, his tenderness towards my children
and now our grandchildren would be a reason alone to
(12:07):
love him. Yeah, did you make an accommodation that you
could talk about to accommodate the My changes came before
I met Mary. I mean, I had a mentor who
walked me through a lot of my stuff that I
was going through as soon as I had kind of
woken up, the gift of my life was standing there.
(12:29):
And but this habit you had of lying, let's say, right,
did you notice yourself saying to yourself, I'm not going
to do that here, I'm not gonna I do remember
one moment where, early on before we were engaged, even
that I started to do a version of push pull
(12:50):
and I looked at Mary. It didn't register on her face.
She didn't play that game. She didn't even nibble at
whatever this little thing I was, you know, doing. So
I was like, oh, because I don't have to do
that anymore. You know, this person doesn't even know this
stupid dance, right, I won't have to do that dance anymore.
(13:12):
For me, I had a big accommodation to make. I
was a single woman with no children, and I married
a man who lived with four sons. Then I was
very flattered because he would say to people, Marlo's the
first person I've ever known that knows the difference between
each of them and can talk to each of them differently.
And I had good relationships with them all. There is
(13:35):
no book that tells you how to do it. And
the one thing I figured out right away for me
that worked. I don't know if it works for everybody
is they have a mom, it's not me. What do
they need from me? Like what is safe and fair
to give to do as far as being a stepparent,
(13:58):
And then I thought, well, man, everybody needs a cheerleader.
There's no Mary Potts. No, there is no amthe no no.
Uh you know to get that, Yeah, and you just
have to hope. Yeah, you know, you know, I mean,
(14:19):
we've made a good lord. We're you know, we have
bumps and ups and downs, and you know I all
the time, but ninety percent of the time we want
to have fun and be happy. But you know we'll
do drama if we have to do a little bit. Well,
our motto is the only drama we like. Is that
that we're paid for. I look at Mary and go.
(14:42):
We can be in the middle of an argument and
I can trust, even with anger in the air, that
if I look at my stuff, she will look at
her stuff, or vice versa, that she is trustworthy to
see her part in any situation. It feels a lot
better to point over there and say you're wrong, and
(15:04):
this is what you've done to me, and I'm a victim,
and it feels so much better than to go, Okay,
here's my hab. I'm going to own up to it.
I mean, where's the fun in that? But the fact
that you do it is magic. We'll have more After
(15:29):
a quick break, we're back to our conversation with Ted
Danson and Mary steam Ergin. They've been together nearly thirty years,
(15:49):
so Marlowe wanted to know what happens when they hit
a rough spot. You do have to have something in
the bank to get you through those moments, and I
do have trust that on the other end of this
my wife. You know, if I walk away in the
middle of a fight and go, there's a voice going,
do you really think that your wife is not crazy?
See about you and love you? And I have to
(16:11):
go No, of course she does, you know, So there
there's something good about having a history of getting through,
a history of love, a history of knowing she loves you.
But yeah, usually it's for me. It's about finally telling
the truth that I don't want to tell, whether it's
I'm angry, I'm angry irrational at you. And if I
(16:34):
tell you I'm angry at this, then then how can
we be? You know, I grew up with a mother
who was unbelievable about the giving, the caring, the loving,
the nurturing. You're in pain, let me you know. She
could be with people dying, people came to her. But
anything negative, a negative thought, a selfish, petty, angry thought,
(17:00):
was intolerable. She would almost get sick, as you know,
she'd have a cold, the flu. As opposed to dealing
with her angers. You know, anything that was dealing with
anger for you was hard huge still is you know
or anything where I mean we just said, both of
us for different, very different reasons. We both had come
(17:25):
from families where there was it was it was fully loaded.
That anger was scary, you know, both of us, And
and that was one of the things before I met him,
I recognized him myself. I realized it. I first went
to therapy and the first thing I learned on day
(17:47):
one was how how I had not been able to
express anger, that there was no room for it, no
place for it, that it was not appropriate in my life.
And for real, yeah, I came from I didn't mean
to interrupt you, no, no, I mean my dad was
(18:09):
a freight train conductor and I grew up in Arkansas,
and that would have been a nice, little middle class
family except that my dad, when I was eight years old,
was diagnosed diagnosed with heart disease, and in those days,
(18:30):
they they dealt with it in very weird ways. He
was basically told, you can't work, you can't hunt, you
can't fish, you can't drive, you can't make love to
your wife, you can't They took everything you can eat,
no problem with bacon, oh my god, you know. Like,
and my dad was one of these people that would
(18:51):
do exactly what his doctor told him, so, you know
his basically they gave him not much reason to live,
but that was supposed to keep him alive. And so
when the doctor told us, I was there with my mother,
(19:12):
and the doctors looked at us, and I remember him
looking at me and saying, now you'd be a good girl.
Now you know your daddy needs you to be a
good girl and keep everything quiet and you know, and
basically the eight year old went, I get it. I
can't ignoise, I can't do anything wrong, I can't make
(19:33):
a mistake, or my dad's going to die. Got it?
Oh my god. And it was backed up with eight
heart attack. And then my dad proceeded to have heart attack,
a heart attack, and during that time he couldn't work.
So we became, you know, we struggled. Yeah, and so
uh so my mother became it was it was always
(19:58):
looking at your dad to see if he's really one
hundred percent of the time. That was my childhood. And
then he would have a heart attack, like one was
when I got to be one. You know that I
knew what I had done to cause each one. So
the good news about that story is that my world
(20:18):
that was safe was books. Just by reading. Emotions were suppressed. Yeah,
but not in books. In books, it was like and
my favorite as a child, like my hero was Pippi Longstocking,
who was like wild and redheaded and wore shoes too
big for self, social gwiggler toes and you know, I
(20:42):
loved all that because it was the opposite of what
I was being. So when you got a hold of
your anger when you went to all this therapy on
day one of therapy, which was when I was twenty
four years old, and this woman on day one goes,
oh my god, well, no wonder you became an actress.
(21:03):
Of course, that's your safe place, that's the way, you know.
And so learning how to be a fully actualized human
being that actually could experience things other than sweet Southern smiles,
you know, that was a huge thing for me. And
(21:24):
I think for a while I got angry too quickly.
It's like a the switch was too It was maladjusted,
all of them, you know. And part of what I've
had to learn to do is just be centered with it. Well,
let me do have a real fight. We have had
(21:44):
some huntingers and I've accused him before a fight. I said,
your ma, your main like a junkyard dog and um.
But the truth is we both hate it. So if
you had to say, what's the foundation that makes a
(22:06):
marriage last other than love, I would say truth and laughter. Yeah,
honestly those two things for us. And the hard work
part is tell the truth. Yeah, because that's that's that's
uncomfortable at times. Yeah. What what when is it uncomfortable
to tell the truth when it's not going to feel
(22:26):
good to the other person, or when it's going to
make you look bad, or when you've done something that
you you know, I'm going to have to tell Mary. Shoot,
you know, because now I can't ride in on my
white horse and be wonderful and noble. I'm an asshole
and I just proved it. Now I'm gonna have to
share this with me. Why do you have to share
it with Mary because otherwise I well, the because we
(22:52):
kind of have an agreement unspoken or spoken agreement to
share it, to not have secrets. So it's not that
I need to share it to get blessing or permission
or something. I need to share it so I don't
have this little inside of me people, And I think
these are really ruicy secrets. Whatever it is. Now, I know,
(23:13):
did you have secrets in the beginning? No? No, I
think that's what was unique about the relationship for each
of us. I'd never not had secrets. I'd been full
of secrets, But for us, I think we had both
kind of had enough of secrets. You know, we had
both lived that way and it had caused us to
(23:38):
feel alone in life. You know, he knows my warts.
He knows exactly how smart or not smart, or kind
or not kind, or how impatient a person I am.
He knows all that. Sometimes it's not that there's a
secret between you, that there's a sadness that you haven't
looked at inside of yourself that you you know, hey,
(24:01):
i'm getting older. This I'm feeling sad about getting older,
and I'm embarrassed to tell you that I'm dead. All
that's good, all those things from But I think also
and no, two people would be more perfect to say this,
dude than you two as famous people, the world either
(24:22):
criticizes a romanticize issue. There's not it's rare or doable. Yeah,
it's rare that they would just like your realness and
here you are very imperfect person. That's if I had
to say, the thing we're most protective of in life,
it's that we keep it real. So that and and
(24:43):
I and I, you know, you also recognize in people.
For me, it's like my mother had a lot of things.
It was complicated, but there were so many wonderful things
about her that I see and marry. You know, there's
a deep kindness and caring, you know, about people. I
don't think I could be with somebody who didn't feel
(25:05):
that way. We had a divine intervention and here we are.
But but but it's also but these are little pigs along
the way that you've said that it's it's it feels
like magic, but it isn't, because there are these things
that you count on each other for. I completely count
(25:26):
on Phil. And I'm not what one would call a
needy little person, but I need something from him, many things.
But one of the things that I need is when
I'm when I go down, when I get blue about
all of these things, you know, out of work, i'm
getting older, whatever it is that I choose to be
blue about that day, only Phil can can bring me back.
(25:53):
And I'm from Hollywood, so I know a bullshitter when
I see one, you know, what he says to me,
you know, it's just it's immediately I respond to it,
you know, and I come back. He waters my plant,
you know, and I come back, you know, so and
I count on it. Gratitude is huge for me, you know. Yeah,
(26:19):
it's okay to be wanting more and different bees, be
grateful and celebrate. You know. The first thing I wrote
in an autobiography I wrote in nineteen seventy eight. The
first line is if I could start over as a parent,
and I wish I could. When my children please me,
(26:40):
I would tell them it's tough because when you how
old were you? When? At what age are you talking about?
For yourself? When you didn't when you all of a
sudden had four sons by your son twenty seven? Wow,
smack dab into Can I carve out a place in
the world? Can I do this? So you're so forward looking?
(27:03):
It's also in a show every day, But parenting is
a lousy job for a perfectionists or to even have
satisfaction because it's just everybody's doing the best they can.
You know, Can I add one thing and no be
(27:23):
quiet ed? Um? I My my form of seduction early
in life was to find the person's gaping hole in
their personality or their being and then fill it and
become indispensable to them. You know. So I know a
lot of guys like you. So I was like around
(27:47):
a lot of kind of broken wing, wounded kind of people,
and don't do that you know, find somebody who's playing
at the same level you are. That's that's actually find
somebody that likes being who they are. Yes, that's better. Yeah,
that's great, But that's also very interesting. What you're saying
(28:07):
is great that the find somebody who likes who they are. Yes,
that's They might not think they're perfect, it might need help,
man then, but they basically they're not running from who
they are. Life is not a series of pointing fingers
and blaming. So you're not going to be the one
(28:27):
to save them. No, you're not. You're going to change.
That's what's great about the book. Every will. You're not
going to change somebody. You'll never fix the broken wing.
I met somebody who is so happy being herself. She
needed me to show up and be me and be real,
but she didn't need me to fix her. And I've
done a lot of fixing, which leads to anger. You know. Inequality, Yeah,
(28:52):
inequality patronizing, and it's horrible when you think you're the
person fixing somebody else. It sucks and it's terrible to them,
it's terrible to you. And you know, find somebody you
don't have to fix. Great when we're in love and
then two and communicative and laughing in life. When we're
(29:12):
that how we are most of the time, it is
truly divine. It is it is heaven on earth. That's
Ted Danson and Mary Steam Virgin. They sure we're fun
and so in love with each other. It was pretty
idea like I would be jealous, but I have you.
You most certainly do until next time. I'm Phil Donnie
(29:36):
and I'm Marlow Thomas. Okay, I win. What you should
do is leave one of the mics on when you're
leaving those two pretending that they like each other. Double
Data is a production of Pushkin Industries. The show was
(29:59):
created by US and produced by Sarah Lily. Michael Bahari
is associate producer. Musical adaptations of It Had to Be
You by Sellwagen, Simfinette, Marlo and I are executive producers,
along with Mia Lobel and Letal Molad from Pushkin. Special
thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Malcolm Gladwell, Hither Fame, John Snars,
(30:25):
Carl Migliori, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostek, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams,
and Bruce Kluger. If you like our show, please remember
to share, rate and review Thanks for listening
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