Phil Donahue, pioneering TV talk show host, dies at 88

Phil Donahue, a groundbreaking daytime TV talk show host, has died, his family announced. He was 88.

Family members told “Today” the television fixture died Sunday night surrounded by loved ones following a long illness of an undisclosed nature. That included his wife, actor Marlo Thomas, whom he married in 1980, three years after they met during a taping of his program, “Donahue.”

The Donahue family asked fans wanting to make donations in his honor to contribute to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital or to the scholarship fund Donahue established at the University of Notre Dame, from which he graduated in 1957.

The Cleveland native was a television trailblazer credited with first establishing a format in which actively engaging audience members was essential to the program. He was on the air for nearly 30 years before stepping away from “Donahue” in 1996.

Fellow TV host Oprah Winfrey once praised Donahue for “opening the door … wide enough for me to walk through” and said her career might not have happened if not for the vision of her 20-time Emmy Award winning predecessor.

Talk show hosts including Winfrey, Morton Downey Jr., and Geraldo Rivera followed in his footsteps in the late 1980s, followed by the likes of Jenny Jones, Jerry Springer and Maury Povich.

Rivera posted on social media he was deeply saddened by Donahue’s death and called him “a hero, a talk show pioneer who inspired me to try my hand at the genre he invented.”

When President Joe Biden awarded Donahue the Presidential Medal of Freedom last May, the White House called his talk show “one of the most influential television programs of its time.”

Donahue briefly returned to television in 2002 with an MSNBC current events program that lasted less than a year.

That same year, TV Guide ranked “Donahue” the 29th greatest television show of all time in a list led by “Seinfeld” and including “I Love Lucy,” “The Honeymooners,” “Saturday Night Live” and “The Cosby Show.”

His career began in radio and television in 1957 with a production assistant job at KYW in Cleveland. He would soon find his way to the microphone. In 1967, he launched “The Phil Donahue Show” on a local Dayton station. That program became nationally syndicated in 1970 and began taping in Chicago. Donahue came to New York City in 1984 when his show moved to 30 Rockefeller Center, where he also contributed to the “Today” show from 1979 to 1988.

He recorded nearly 7,000 hour-long episodes of his talk show before broadcasting his farewell on Sept. 13, 1996.

Tributes poured in Monday morning following news of Donahue’s death.

“One of the true trail-blazing icons of American television,” host Piers Morgan posted to X. “Such a clever, interesting man.”

ABC News anchor Deborah Roberts remembered Donahue as a catalyst for her work.

“Like so many journalists, he inspired me during my career,” she posted on social media. “What a life!”

Donahue was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame almost immediately after first stepping away from the grind of daily television. He credited his parents and wife for his successes and gave special thanks to his children for their open-mindedness with regards to the programming he brought to the small screen.

“My children Michael, Kevin, Dan, Jim and Mary Rose have dealt very, very well with the burden of having a celebrity father who has been known to (host) transvestites, people who kill their mothers, people who kill their fathers, people who are their own grandfathers, their own uncles and to this day remain proud of me and call me all the time,” he joked during his 2003 induction ceremony.”

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) honored Donahue in 1990 during its inaugural GLAAD Media Awards event. He was lauded by GLAAD again in 1993 with a special recognition for his pioneering coverage of gay, lesbian and transgender issues. “