Phil Donahue, a groundbreaking daytime television presenter who Oprah Winfrey once known for her own legacy as a talk show host, has died at the age of 88. Donahue “died Sunday night at home, surrounded by his wife of 44 years, Marlo Thomashis sister, children, grandchildren and his beloved golden retriever Charlie,” his family said in a statement. His cause of death was not disclosed, but Donahue’s relatives said he suffered from a “long illness.”

“If there is no Phil Donahue show, there would be no Oprah Winfrey Show”, Winfrey wrote in the September 2002 issue of Oh, Oprah magazine. “He was the first to recognize that women are interested in more than mascara tips and cake recipes – that we are intelligent, that we care about the world around us and that we want the best possible lives for ourselves.”

Born on December 21, 1935, in Cleveland, Ohio, Donahue began his career as a broadcast journalist in talk radio and television in the 1950s after initially earning a business degree from Notre Dame. Donahue is best known for his eponymous talk show, which premiered in his home state in 1967 and moved to New York City in 1985. The hour-long show featured frequent audience participation—”Is the caller there?” became a typical refrain—and tackled sensitive topics, including abortion, child abuse in the Catholic Church, and the Ku Klux Klan.

“We started on location in Dayton with two cameras and no stars – we could only afford to fly in two guests a week,” Donahue told Winfrey in 2002. “We had no couches, no announcers, no band and no folding chairs, no jokes. I didn’t say, ‘Calm down!’ We knew we were visually boring, so we had to focus on the subjects – that’s what made us come alive.”

His nationally syndicated The Phil Donahue Show, later renamed Donahue and moved to Chicago in 1974, reaching more than 200 stations across the country. During its 26-year run, his show was the first American program to be broadcast in the Soviet Union in 1987. Three years later, it was the first American talk show to interview Nelson Mandela after the South African president was released from prison. And in 1992, Donahue moderated the presidential primary debate between Bill Clinton And Jerry Brown. He won more than a dozen Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award.

Donahue ended his run in 1996, nearly two decades after receiving his greatest gift from the show: a chance meeting with his second wife, Marlo Thomas. The actor, best known for his starring role in ABC’s groundbreaking sitcom The girl was a guest on Donahue’s show in 1977, where Thomas told Donahue, “You’re wonderful,” and took his hand. “You’re loving and generous, and you like women, and it’s a pleasure, and whoever the woman is in your life, she’s very lucky.” Donahue and Thomas married in 1980.

Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas in 1979.Images Press/Getty Images

After a six-year break, Donahue briefly returned to television in 2002 and hosted another Donahue show for MSNBC, which was canceled after six months due to low ratings, The New York TimesBut a leaked internal memo suggested that Donahue was seen as a “difficult public face for NBC in wartime” because he provided “a home for the liberal anti-war agenda” due to his opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

“They were terrified of the anti-war voice,” Donahue told Democracy Now! in 2013. “And that’s no exaggeration. Anti-war voices were not popular. And if you’re General Electric, you don’t want to have an anti-war voice on your own cable channel; (former U.S. Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld is the biggest customer.” He added: “It’s almost funny when you look back at how – how management was paralyzed by the anti-war voice. We were complainers. We weren’t patriotic. Americans didn’t agree with us. And we weren’t good for business.”

After leaving MSNBC, Donahue wrote, produced and co-directed the 2007 documentary Body of Warwhich was nominated for an Oscar. In 2020, he and Thomas published a book entitled What makes a marriage last: 40 famous couples reveal the secrets of a happy life and later hosted a podcast together called Double date with Marlo Thomas and Phil DonahueThree months before his death, Donahue was appointed by President Joe Biden like Thomas, who received the award in 2014 from Barack Obamawatched.

Donahue leaves behind Thomas and four children from his first marriage. His son James “Jim” Patrick died in 2014 at the age of 51 from an aortic aneurysm.