Committed

For the past five years, Alex and Christina had been running a bookstore that is both their primary income as a couple and their passion. They opened A Novel Idea, bookshop in Philly, a year before the pandemic hit. And when the city closed all of its stores, they had to completely rethink everything about their small business. They had no one to lean on, but one another. For better. Or worse. This is a story about perseverance and pivoting, about love and about following your dreams. It's about how the things that should break us often bring us closer together.

Molly and Ash met when Molly was in her late thirties, newly separated from her husband and the mother of a four year old. She was just started to explore her sexuality and wasn’t looking for anything serious. But you know what they say…make plans and the universe laughs. Molly and Ash fell in love and quickly knew they wanted to be together, but that meant navigating how to blend a family and reconciling the fact that Ash wanted their own biological child and Molly did not want any more kids. The two of them are here today (and spoiler, they have a new baby) because they put in the work. Their story is a gorgeous narrative of the ways we need to change, adapt and grow for love and family.

Manny struggled with porn addiction for years. He told himself that when he met the right woman he would be done. Then he met Becca and knew she was the one. But the night before his wedding he was still watching porn and he was so far gone in his addiction that he couldn't perform sexually on his wedding night. Manny and Becca struggled with Manny's porn addiction for years until both of them finally reached a breaking point. This is the story about how they made it out the other side.

The FBI came to Carl and Amy Nelson's house in the middle of the pandemic. That's when Carl found out that he was under investigation for a federal crime. Over the next two years, the couple had most of their money and assets seized by the government. What wasn't taken, they had to sell to pay for lawyers. They lived in constant fear of the FBI returning one morning and arresting Carl in front of their four daughters. And to this day, both Amy and Carl insist that Carl has done nothing wrong, and he has yet to actually be charged with a crime. But still the two of them have had their lives ripped apart in ways that could have completely destroyed their marriage. People ask Amy all the time. Why are you still with him? People can't believe she stuck by his side. She can't imagine not doing it.

In 2006 Lee Woodruff got the phone call that no wife ever wants to get. Her husband Bob, then the co-anchor of ABC World News Tonight, had been hit by a roadside bomb in Iraq. In the explosion of rocks and metal, Bob was critically injured, sustaining shrapnel wounds to the head.He was evacuated to Bethesda Maryland where he was put into a medically induced coma for five weeks to allow his brain to heal. Bob and Lee had already been together for a long time, they had four young kids and Lee had no idea what their life would look like moving forward. Lee recounts her love story and their family's journey beautifully in her New York Times bestseller In an Instant, but I have to say that there was nothing like hearing both Bob and Lee tell their story together in this interview. This is a story about the unexpected, both the unexpected tragedies that upend our lives, but also the unexpected joy that we find in the aftermath of those tragedies. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In April of 2020 the writer Amy Bloom traveled to Switzerland to help her husband Brian die with dignity before he was plunged into the long term suffering of living with a dementing disease. She writes about their late in life romance and how she helped Brian to end his life in her gorgeous memoir In Love. This story hits close to home for any of us who have ever watched a loved one suffer and felt helpless to try to alleviate their pain. My own dad was bed ridden with muscular dystrophy for eight years before he finally passed in 2016 and I know that if I could have, I would have done anything to help him do what he wanted to do to have a more dignified death. That is exactly what Amy managed to do. Her story isn't always easy to hear, but I promise it will stick with you for a long, long time.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Last fall Renee moved from Singapore to Los Angeles to be with her partner April. April calls it a grand gesture and it certainly is. But it was confusing to a lot of people because Renee and April aren't in a romantic relationship. At all. And yet they do consider themselves life partners. The two women have been best friends since they were teenagers and they now consider themselves platonic life partners. But our society doesn't really recognize that as a thing. Committed is a podcast about love stories, and here's the thing. This IS a love story. We talk so much about romantic love in our culture. We see romantic love in movies and books and songs...so many songs. And yet we rarely talk about the lifelong friendships that are the backbones of our lives. The ones that often last much longer than a marriage. Today we do.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On their first date Tony Dokoupil said to Katy Tur, "So, we both have crazy parents."  This was wildly refreshing for Katy to hear and for Tony to say at the start of a relationship. Any of you with crazy parents will understand how much easier it is to be with someone who also has an unorthodox family.  As she recounts in her stunning new NY Times bestselling memoir Rough Draft, Katy's parents were the first helicopter news pilots in Los Angeles; they covered some totally insane stuff from the OJ Simpson police chase to the LA Riots, often with Katy along for the ride. Her dad was brilliant and volatile and often abusive. Tony's dad was a multinational drug smuggler who used the drug money to fund Tony's fancy education and privileged childhood. Getting it all out in the open was the start to their relationship. But there were bumps along the way. Tony was divorced with two kids. He didn't know if he wanted more and if he didn't that was a dealbreaker for Katy. At the time Katy was a rising star in the news world covering the 2016 Trump campaign and Tony was struggling with what to do next in his career. They were both on the road all the time. But they figured it out. They fell in love, got married, had babies, living and worked through COVID, supported one another's careers and it all began with Tony saying, "we've both got crazy parents." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For Mike Comforto, the worry and the anxiety over his infant son completely took over his life and his marriage. He was constantly convinced that the baby was in near fatal danger and those fears only intensified when he and his wife Nicole had a second child. Once he was having panic attacks and anxiety episodes every single day Mike was diagnosed with OCD and his road to recovery was a long process that is still ongoing today. The term OCD gets thrown around a lot, but we rarely think about the impact that it can have on an individual, and their spouse and their children. Mike and his wife Nicole had to learn how to tame his crippling panic otherwise they'd never be able to thrive as parents of two children or as husband and wife.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Renee Montgomery is a basketball legend. She won two WNBA championships with the Minnesota Lynx. Today she's a part owner and Vice President of the WNBA team the Atlanta dream and a social justice activist. Renee talks a lot about the many, many ways that basketball has changed her life, including getting to meet her wife, the singer Sirena Grace. Meeting Sirena at an Atlanta Hawks game completely changed Renee's life in myriad ways and the two women wake up every day thinking about how they can each support the other's dreams, goals and personal brand. I love this story because Renee seems so tough on the outside, but when you get to know her she is a hopeless romantic who found her soulmate when she least expected it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sarah and Eric became foster parents in the hopes of one day adopting. And when baby Coco came into their lives it looked like it could be for good. But that wasn't the case. Caring for Coco became much messier, more challenging and more difficult than Eric and Sarah ever expected, mainly due to the fact that the foster system continually told them that they would likely be able to adopt Coco and then completely blindsided Sarah and Eric by pushing for reunification with Coco's birth mother who they called a "bad prospect" for getting her child back. Sarah writes about this heartbreaking situation so beautifully in her book Stranger Care, the title of which was inspired by how the foster system refers to the non-relative men and women caring for the hundreds of thousands of children in their care every year. Sarah and Eric had to learn a new kind of love, not just a love for baby Coco, but also a love for her birth mother Evelyn, in order to give Coco the best possible life she could have. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Erin and Jason's third date ended with Jason falling off of a roof and ending up in the hospital with a major spinal cord injury that left him in a wheelchair. The two of them have only been on a few dates, but both of them had felt a serious connection, maybe even the beginnings of love. But neither of them knew what could or should happen after an accident that completely changed Jason's life. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Peloton Instructor and international cycling champion Christine D'Ercole was not looking for love. She was focusing on her work, her sport and her daughter. And then one shout out on her bike led to some witty banter with a rider which led to a deep friendship which led too much, much more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Committed is back for Season Seven on June 8th!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly Frey, host of Stuff You Missed in History Cass, sits down with Siedah Garrett, one of the ten winners of Seneca Women to Hear: Search for the Next Great Female PodcastersSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We interviewed Shazi and Joe a couple of years ago and we are bringing their episode back into our feed because Shazi has a new podcast called The Healthy Baby Show. Shazi and Joe met while Shazi was building her company, the organic baby brand Happy Family Organics. Their storybook romance completely changed when their first child Zane was diagnosed with regressive autism. Shazi and Joe were forced to re-examine everything about their lives and their marriage to figure out how to parent Zane. But they did it; their family didn’t just survive, they thrived. Their family motto is “we win,” because they refuse to give up.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How far would you go for love...literally how far would you travel? Would you cross mountains, borders, continents? Today's love story is about one man who bicycled thousands of miles across foreign lands just to be reunited with the woman he loved. The year was 1975. Charlotte, a young Swedish tourist had just driven 22 days along the hippie trail from Sweden to New Delhi India in search of adventure. She spied a handsome young man sketching portraits on the street for cash and asked him if he would draw her. But when he looked at her he knew they were destined to be together. So he told her. Instead of turning tail and running for the hills Charlotte wanted to know more. And thus begins a beautiful love story that spans continents and decades.

Arthur and Ben met in church in the nineties. Both men grew up thinking that they might not find a church that accepted them as gay men and that they might not even find love as gay men. But one day in the pews of St. Bart's Episcopal church they found one another and they started a life together. They both wanted to be fathers and they tried open adoption and then regular adoption and fostering but there were so many road blocks.... This episode is the story of three decades of love, how these two found one another in the chaos of the AIDS crisis in the nineties, how they flourished in careers as a lawyer and a scientist. And how they ultimately both chose to leave those fancy careers and serve the church that first brought them together by going back to school. Today Arthur is a priest and Ben is a deacon. They both serve different churches in Georgia. This is a story about resilience and love and God and science and how all of those things come together in messy and beautiful ways.

Shannon and Jerome Schwartz are married television writers. But up until a few years ago they had never collaborated on a project. They had their own separate careers and they were very content in their own spheres. But then a project came along that felt like the right thing to do together. And that project was to try to turn the Committed podcast into a television series for ABC Studios.

Larry and Sarah Nannery didn't know that Sarah was autistic when they first met and fell in love. They knew their brains worked differently and sometimes that was frustrating, but very often it was also incredibly interesting. They had their miscommunications, but they made figured them out. And then after about seven years of marriage Sarah got a formal diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. I found Larry and Sarah through their book, What to Say Next, where they break down how they communicate as a Neurodiverse couple. This is a love story about learning how your partner's brain works, how every single person's brain is different and unique, and there are lessons in here for all of us.

One wife writes romantic comedy novels for a living. The other wife works with the world's most famous relationship guru and had her on speed dial throughout the early days of their relationship and engagement. Does this pairing make for a perfect union? Sometimes it does. But no relationship is perfect. Lindsay and Georgia work at their love every single day and they are the first ones to tell you that it takes a village of other humans to make a marriage succeed.

Tim and Susan Bratton found their path to being intimacy experts because their own marriage was falling apart. Tim was cheating on Susan. Susan didn't enjoy sex at all. So they dug in and went to counseling and workshops and they became experts on the subject. And along the way they fixed their own marriage. Today Tim and Susan are two of the most sexually open couples I have ever met. They are in an open and polyamorous relationship, they have a thriving sex intimacy business and they're ridiculously happy and in love.

Christina and Ryan Hillsberg are a real life Mr and Mrs Smith. They met and fell in love while they were at the CIA. Their time as spies shaped who they are, but it also shaped their marriage.

Lauren and Cameron got engaged before they ever set eyes on one another. They met on the reality TV show Love is Blind. If you're not familiar with the show it involves 15 men and 15 women going into this experiment where they see if they can find love through a wall. An actual wall. The two of them fell for each other in just ten days and got engaged without ever touching. It sounds crazy, but they're still together and still really happy. Maybe there's something to being forced to fall in love with your partner's mind before anything else.

Joe served half his life in prison for taking the life of another man. Sheila met Joe while he was serving his time. She was 20 years older than him, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, a mother, a homeowner and she fell in love and married a man in prison. Joe was behind bars for twelve years of their relationship. I first learned about Sheila and Joe's love story in an incredible book by Elizabeth Greenwood called Love Lockdown: Dating, Sex and Marriage in America's Prisons. Sheila and Joe's story got under my skin for a lot of reasons. I couldn't imagine how someone like Sheila would fall in love with someone incarcerated for murder. But she did. And their love thrived behind bars and is still thriving today.

When Ash met Chip he was a part of the furry community, a community of people that enjoys an interest in anthropomorphized animals, that often likes to dress up as cartoon animals, sometimes in social situations. Ash had no idea what to expect from this new person that she was very attracted to. She had no idea how to dive into the furry community herself. But she did. Finding the furry community through Chip helped Ash learn to express herself in totally new ways. For the two of them the furry community is so much more than I ever could have imagined. This interview completely blew up any misconceptions I had about this world and how we choose to express ourselves from the inside out.

Committed is back for Season Seven on November 17th!

Sonya and Paul Kix have been married since 2007. She's a Black woman from Texas and he's a white guy from Iowa. There were zero black people in his graduating class. Living as an interracial couple, Paul living as the only white person in his household that now includes three children, that forces their entire family to have difficult conversations about race on a regular basis. It has been more than 50 years since Loving versus Virginia struck down laws banning interracial marriage. And some may take it for granted that that means life is much less complicated for interracial couples. It is in a lot of ways, but in the face of today's national reckoning on race and systemic racism couples like Paul and Sonya also have to figure out how to best navigate race in their relationship. How can Paul be empathetic to how Sonya feels watching a police shooting of a black man, how can he raise black boys in a world that already sees them as black men, how can he understand what it feels like to be pulled over by the police as a black person? Navigating all of this can be exhausting for everyone, but also completely necessary.

With no previous climbing experience Harold Earls sets out to climb the world's tallest mountain right after marrying Rachel, the absolute love of his life. Rachel had been supportive. Harold's dreams were her dreams. But that year was one of the most dangerous years of all time for Everest climbers and at one point during the descent Harold was caught in a life-threatening snow and ice storm. Rachel hadn't heard from Harold and she just kept thinking, my husband might die, my brand new husband might die. This bonus episode (brought to you in 3D audio) is about dreams and hope and how we help one another accomplish the things we could never accomplish alone.

Broadway actors Amanda Kloots and Nick Cordero were a young and healthy married couple with a new baby when Nick went into the ICU with COVID-19. Nick was only 41. He was strong and everyone thought he would be out of the hospital in a week or two. But Nick's health continued to deteriorate. He couldn't breathe on his own. His organs began to fail. Amanda did everything she could to stay hopeful. She rallied the entire world in song and prayer. We don't normally do episodes with just one part of a couple. But sometimes there is an exception to the rule and Amanda Kloots IS that exception. In her new book Live Your life Amanda is candid and raw and so incredibly honest about what it was like to watch Nick waste away from a disease that no one understood. She reflects back on their few years together and wonders whether she was a good enough wife to Nick at times, whether she did enough to support his dreams. She also painstakingly describes how she has committed to keeping Nick's memory and music alive for the world and for their toddler son Elvis. Her story is heartbreaking, but it also leaves you with hope that we can all get through our darkest moments.

This week we are bringing you an old episode in celebration of our friend Doree Shafrir’s new book Thanks for Waiting. Doree and her husband Matt have been on the show twice to talk about their long struggle with IVF and what that meant for their family. Doree’s new book is all about hitting life’s milestones (like getting married and having kids) a little later than expected and it is a beautiful read along with her and Matt’s episode.

Todd Tilghman had been a pastor for more than 20 years when he realized he wanted to do something new. Call it an itch, a calling, a midlife crisis but Todd knew he needed to do something else. And so he tried out for The Voice. This episode is about Todd’s journey from pastor to singing sensation but it is mostly about how his wife of more than 20 years, Brooke, pushed him and encouraged him to get there. Todd and Brooke have weathered so many seasons in their two decade marriage. They got married young, nearly got divorced, came back together, were blessed with eight children, two of them adopted from Korea. They dealt with Brooke’s anxiety and depression, with money ups and downs, raising a family of ten on a pastor’s salary. And when Todd needed that change it was Brooke who pushed him to follow his dreams.

Laura Stachel and her husband Hal Aronson save lives every single day through their work providing solar power to hospitals around the world. Neither of them ever could have done it on their own. Their marriage has informed their work and their work has informed their marriage. Laura is an obgyn and public health professional. When she traveled to Nigeria on a research trip she realized that women and children were dying during childbirth because hospitals had no electricity. When she brought the problem to Hal he saw the solution. He immediately began to design solar energy programs for these hospitals. Today We Care Solar is a vibrant nonprofit that has reached more than 6,200 health facilities serving more than 7.5 million mothers and newborns.

This is the story of a female police chief in Philadelphia and how she reacted to Floyd’s murder and how she managed her police force through what came next. But it’s much more than that. This is also about the woman who supported that police officer, her partner, now wife, Jackie. This is a love story. But it is also a story about policing and how things do have to change.

When Aimee Oates got pregnant with her first baby she told her husband John that the two of them were hitting the road with him and his band Hall & Oates. It wasn't a thing that usually happened. Wives, babies, they didn't usually come on the road with this old boys club. But Aimee was adamant. And they did it. They traveled as a family with the iconic rock group Hall & Oates. Their son took his first steps in a casino. They barely ever spent a day apart. I have always been curious about what it is like to be married to a rock star. I don't think Aimee and John's story is necessarily representative of all rock stars, but it is so beautiful how they found an unconventional way to nurture their family and their marriage all over the world.

COVID-19 has divided Americans in so many ways in the past year. Many Americans have completely opposite views on whether or not they want to be vaccinated right now. And those conversations are happening very close to home, sometimes within the same home. We were so curious to know what was said behind closed doors when one spouse was pro-vaccine and the other one was against getting the COVID-19 vaccine. We put out a call to the Committed community and got way more responses than we expected. Today's episode contains two stories of couples who do not see eye to eye on getting the vaccine and how they manage to get through being on very opposite sides of the issue.

If you binge-watched Tiger King during the beginning of the pandemic like Nick and I did then you may think you know everything there is to know about Carole and Howie Baskin. You probably have an idea about them in your head, maybe even a suspicion or two. But there is so much that you didn't see on Tiger King. We got to interview Howie and Carole about it all -- the documentary, Joe Exotic, the murder for hire plot, the cat sanctuary, Dancing with the Stars -- but most of all about their beautiful love story filled with compassion, humor and dedication to a cause.

Chris had proposed to Goldie when they were 18. He got down on one knee at Cinderella's castle. When you're that young you think marriage might be like a fairytale, that the prince being down on one knee is the one thing that will make it all better. But their first years of marriage were hard. They were totally broke and Goldie was dealing with trauma from past sexual abuse. She developed an autoimmune disorder where she was in pain all the time. Pain that made her want to take her own life. Chris never gave up. When Goldie tried to commit suicide he doubled down on his efforts to be by her side, to provide constant hope and optimism, to do anything and everything to save his wife's life.

Reverend Roxy and Reverend Joshua come from completely different backgrounds. He’s a white guy from Colorado. She’s a Black woman from Brooklyn. They met while they were both chaplains in the military. They fell in love fast and hard despite all their differences. Being in an interracial couple in America has never been easy, but right now, as our country deals with a much overdue racial reckoning, there is often even more of a learning process involved. Joshua had to learn how to grow and adapt and restructure his world-view in a multitude of different ways because he was raised in an environment where race or racial issues weren't really something he was ever confronted with. Roxy had to learn to educate Joshua, and also when to step back and let him educate himself. They both had to learn how to have an open and honest dialogue to express how they really felt. They really enjoyed figuring out how to grow together. And after they got married they discovered they loved working with other couples to do the same thing. Together they created a premarital counseling and wedding officiated business. Reverend Roxy is something of a wedding celebrity these days. She’s performed ceremonies on shows like Love is Blind and Married at First Sight, usually in some fantastic designer gown that should be on a red carpet.

Leah was terrified of getting married. She didn’t want to give up her independence. But a terrible accident at a construction site changed everything Leah thought she wanted. Her longtime boyfriend Kelsey rushed to her bedside to be with her and she proposed to him from the hospital. The two of them have had to figure out how to navigate their first year of marriage during a pandemic and with Leah paralyzed from the waist down.

For forty years Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas tried to keep their celebrity marriage out of the spotlight. But after being married for four decades, or what felt like a hundred years as Phil says, they got interested in researching what makes a marriage work and last and thrive over such a long period of time and they decided to put their own marriage front and center in a new podcast. Marlo never wanted to get married. But she was so smitten with Phil after appearing on his show in 1977 she finally took the plunge. Marlo became a stepmom to Phil's four boys, they lived long distance and figured out how to make it work. They survived Hollywood and cross country moves and jealousy over co-stars. Their wit and wisdom about commitment is unparalleled. We are so excited to share their long love story with you and introduce you to their incredible new podcast called Double Date. Fans of Committed will just adore the interviews Phil and Marlo do on double date with celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, Sting and Trudy Styler and so many more.

Committed is back for Season Six on April 14th!

Our host Jo Piazza has a new podcast series called Under the Influence. Of course she found a married couple while reporting it. She finds couples for Committed everywhere! Paul Vlitos and Collette Lyons are a married couple who recently wrote a novel about mom influencers together. An entire novel! We interviewed them to find out how a married couple manages to do anything creative at all while raising a toddler and also while getting COVID over Christmas. If you haven't listened to Jo's new podcast yet it is a deep dive into the world of mom influencing on Instagram. Check it out here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-influence-with-jo-piazza/id1544171101

What was supposed to be a few months of travel for Garrett and Jessica Gee quickly turned into a lifestyle and a career. The couple figured out how to become travel influencers, how to get brands to pay them and their young family to travel the world. Part of me wanted to find out that this wasn’t a dream...that traveling with three small children was actually exhausting and tedious, but the truth is that Jessica and Garrett make it seem easy, and beautiful. And in a time when we are all stuck at home for the foreseeable future, their nomadic family feels like the escapism we desperately need.

Kate Pierson and Monica Coleman run the super hip Catskills motel Kate’s Lazy Meadow together. Kate is also a member of the new wave band The B-52s. The two women have been up in the mountains since the pandemic began, taking care of the motel, bird watching, gardening, canning tomatoes, and hiking with their German Shepherds. This is also the longest amount of time they’ve been together now that Kate isn't off on tour. Listening to the two of them you can hear how fascinated they each are with one another and how they support one another creatively. Kate and Monica met in New York City back in 2000. At the time both of them were with other people and Kate had never been with a woman, but Monica wasn't just any woman...

This past November Pennsylvania's Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman was thrust into the national spotlight as he defended his state against voter fraud. Suddenly the second couple of PA, John and his wife Gisele, were instant social media celebrities. Gisele refers to herself as SLOP, the second lady of Pennsylvania. John and Gisele are a delight. They're intensely compassionate and committed to making the state of PA a better place. Talking to the two of them you get the sense that either of them would have completely thrived in public service and advocacy on their own, but together they’ve been able to do it a dozen times more.

I will read anything about how other couples and parents are getting it done during the pandemic. That’s why I couldn’t turn away from a profile I read about Carl and Jesse Crawford in the New York Time. It was about how Carl moved out of their house so he could work at a power plant as an essential worker and how Jesse was left behind to home school their kids while working a full time job. Jesse is a super-mama and the fact that she essentially ran a kindergarten through a middle school completely inspired me to stop moaning about parenting my own two babies.

Jana Kramer and Mike Caussin had the makings of a fairytale love story. She had a successful acting and singing career...he was a professional football player...they fell in love hard and fast and had a picture perfect wedding. But fairy tales don’t exist. Jana and Mike learned that the hard way. It was only a couple of months into their relationship that Jana discovered that Mike was cheating on her. And then she learned about more affairs. Mike admitted that he was a sex addict, a story that was picked up by US Weekly. Jana and Mike had to live out the worst moments of their life in the public eye. But Jana and Mike were committed to trying to work through all of their crap.

The celebrated children’s book author Amy Krouse Rosenthal passed away from ovarian cancer on March 13, 2017, just 10 days after her essay looking for a new love for her husband Jason was published in the Modern Love section of the New York Times. Amy wanted to give Jason the chance to love again, to keep living life to its fullest after she was gone. This episode focuses on the 26 wonderful years Jason and Amy were together, how they faced her mortality, and how Jason learned to grieve Amy and rebuild his life after she was gone. We also got to talk about Jason's wonderful new book, My Wife Said You Might Want to Marry Me.

In March of 2017 Andrew and Edward Senn received a call from a social worker that they were chosen to foster a set of premature nine day old twins who had been born with drugs in their system. The couple had been hoping to enter a long-term private adoption but they knew right away that these babies needed them. Becoming parents and going through the very slow roller coaster of the foster system, getting the family they always wanted in a very unconventional way has changed Andrew and Edward in ways they never could have imagined.

Shaun King has been advocating for justice as an outspoken Black Lives Matter activist since 2014. He’s incredibly outspoken about his work on Twitter. He’s beloved by some people and hated by others. Amidst it all he’s raising five children with his high school sweetheart Rai. And even though Rai steadfastly supports Shaun she never exactly chose to be married to the movement.

Francis Cretarola and Cathy Lee opened their restaurant Le Virtu on Philadelphia's Passyunk Avenue right before the economy collapsed in 2008. This restaurant, one that serves Abruzzese Italian food is Francis and Cathy's passion. They survived 2008 and together they have created community and family for their staff and their patrons. But then the pandemic happened. And Cathy and Francis have had to hunker down and make some incredibly difficult decisions, decisions Francis says are way above his pay grade, to try to keep their staff and their patrons safe while keeping their restaurant afloat. Running a restaurant is like walking a tightrope. Margins are thin and the stress is high, but Cathy and Francis have powered through the pandemic with grace, compassion and humor. I love this story because it's here in my hometown of Philly and it shows just how hard we're all working together to get through this tough year.

Skyler knew he was gay when he met Amanda. But he loved her and he wanted to start a family with her. Both of them are members of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They believe that marriage is so much bigger than just the two of them and this life on Earth. And through countless difficult discussion they’ve found a way to build a marriage not in spite of Skyler’s sexuality, but in addition to it. They’ve started to try to build a family and both of them say that Skyler being gay isn’t the hardest thing they’ve faced in their marriage. The loss of their baby Milo at 24 weeks was much more difficult for them to get through and out of necessity they became even closer as a couple.

Codie and Tommy Oliver met, got engaged, got married and created a blockbuster television show together in the time that most couples start leaving a toothbrush at one another’s apartments. Their show, Black Love, is about to start it’s fourth season on OWN. It is a beautiful docu series that shatters stereotypes and showcases incredible love stories. Creating something from scratch is never easy, but it’s even more challenging when you’re doing it with your partner.

Bestselling author Caitlin Moran has been married to her husband Pete for 25 years. When Caitlin first book, How to Be a Woman, turned into a global phenomenon, Pete stepped back from his successful career as a journalist to pick up the slack at home and take care of their two daughters. Caitlin credits Pete with helping her career thrive, for not being her glass ceiling. This episode is a beautiful portrait of the middle of a marriage, of how we sustain love over the decades, of how we support one another, of how sometimes we schedule sex in a calendar invite and why that is completely OK.

Committed is back for season five on October 14th! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You guys might already know our guests today—Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman. Interviews with Megan and Nick usually kick off by talking about how they’re something completely out of the ordinary—a Hollywood couple that has stayed together for about two decades. I love these articles because they use language like they’re describing aliens or pandas mating in captivity in a suburban American zoo. In Hollywood terms, a love story that lasts longer than the production of a single movie is considered successful. But Nick and Megan do have a secret, a reason they think they’ve stayed together so long: They commit to truly being together. Also...they like one another. And liking your spouse tends to go a long way.

In 2016 Shapearl Wells was ready to end her marriage of 19 years to her husband Brent. Then her son was killed by gun violence in Chicago. In the worst moment of her life she realized that Brent was her safe place, the only person who could support her as she embarked on an investigation into Courtney’s death, an investigation that would eventually become the basis for the podcast Somebody. In the months and years following Courtney’s death Shapearl and Brent discovered a new way to be together that was shaped by their shared history, their friendship and their faith.

Shazi and Joe met while Shazi was building her company, the organic baby brand Happy Family Organics. Their storybook romance completely changed when their first child Zane was diagnosed with regressive autism. Shazi and Joe were forced to re-examine everything about their lives and their marriage to figure out how to parent Zane. But they did it; their family didn’t just survive, they thrived. Their family motto is “we win,” because they refuse to give up.

Pregnancy is difficult no matter who you are. But it can be even harder when society sees you one way, pigeonholes you, thinks they know exactly who you are. Spencer and Kelly’s journey to parenthood was a long one...and a beautiful one. Spencer identifies as a queer male. His husband Kelly also identifies queer. And even though Spencer is also transgender and had gone through a medical transition to present as a man, he was still able to carry their baby. Kelly and Spencer’s story first appeared on the website MotherMag.com and my friend Erin Fehrer did a beautiful job documenting the two of them becoming parents to an incredible little boy named Alexis. That’s how we found them. Today they’re dads, raising Alexis, living in Sydney, Australia and navigating the very real ups and downs of marriage after having a baby.

Nick and Hana met as Marines on active duty and got married fast. They hardly had a honeymoon or a courtship. Demanding military jobs and having young children took a toll on their relationships. But Nick was also suffering from the aftershocks of something that happened before he met Hana. He was a Marine in Fallujah, Iraq during Operation Phantom Fury and still suffered PTSD from it years later. Hana and Nick had to learn how to confront his PTSD and traumatic brain injury together in order to save their marriage.

It was fitting that we did today’s interview during the COVID-19 pandemic because it’s different from the shows we usually do, but it makes sense in the strange new world. Hannah and Kelty Luber aren’t married to each other….they’re twin sisters. Both of them are married to men, but they have chosen to live together on a farm outside of Portland, Oregon. On the farm they share their lives and their parenting duties. They’re twins...they’re incredibly close, but this decision wasn’t just about them—first they had to convince their husbands to join their families together.

Since we're all hungry for things to listen to we wanted to drop some old episodes in your feed. Bestselling author Emma Straub's new book All Adults Here was released today and it is the perfect quarantine read about the very real messiness of family life. Way back in season one we interviewed Emma and her husband Mike about following their dreams and launching an independent book store. It's just a nice listen right now as a reminder that we can and will create beautiful things out of our dreams again soon.

When Caroline Wright was told she had a brain tumor that was so fatal doctors nicknamed it The Terminator and that she only had a year left to live she started writing…She began to write for her two young boys and for her husband Garth. She filled dozens of black and white marbled composition books.. And in those notebooks she wrote them a blueprint for what their lives might look like after she was gone. Writing just became this ritual, this hopeful landscape that was distanced from the craziness of being a patient. It gave Caroline this hopeful version of what motherhood and marriage could look like.

Cecilia Latorre and her partner Gerry tried to blend their two families under one roof. But their children had very different lifestyles and everyone was unhappy. We often take for granted that living together is a hallmark of commitment. That couples must cohabitate if they’re serious about their relationship. But what if cohabitating actually makes the relationship worse? Cecilia and Gerry decided to stay together by purchasing separate houses that are side by side. They have their own bedrooms, their own bathrooms, their own lives…. and they’ve never been happier.

Dr. David Fajgenbaum has been read his last rites five times. He suffers from the extremely rare and deadly Castleman disease, an orphan disease with no known cure or treatments. To buy himself more time to marry his college sweetheart Caitlin and start a family with her David embarked on a journey to find the cure and treatment for his disease on his own.

Glennon Doyle was still married to the father of her three children when she saw Abby Wambach across a room and felt something that can only be described as love at first sight. Glennon didn’t think it would be possible to be with Abby, to be with a woman, to blow up the carefully curated life she had been taught she was supposed to have. But she did it anyway. And It wasn’t easy, because life isn’t easy or simple. But it was possible and once Glennon realized it was possible she began to live the truest and most beautiful version of her life. Glennon and Abby’s love story cracked our hearts right open and we couldn’t be happier to bring it to you to launch season four.

Three stories of love and commitment in the age of COVID-19. A Maine doctor moves out of his house to protect his wife, toddler and unborn child from the virus. A local cardboard factory steps up to make cardboard cutouts of the 120 guests who won’t be at a young couple’s wedding. And one couple who got married without leaving their apartment...in the Nintendo video game Animal Crossing.

Committed is back for season four on April 15th. We have ten new stories of love and marriage, hope and fear, failure and success and all the other messy parts of being a human in the world right now. This season on Committed we bring you a wife who tries to write her legacy for her husband and children after she’s diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor. We have the author and activist Glennon Doyle on leaving the husband of her three children for the love of her life, Abby Wambach. And we have a couple who tried so hard to blend their families and live together under one roof, but ultimately found that the secret of their success was in living apart...in houses next door to one another. We've got these stories and much, much more, including what love and commitment looks like amidst the strangeness of a pandemic.

We’ve gotten so many voicemails from you that we had to run another episode of three minute love stories. This week we have a couple trying to work through their changing marriage as they adopt a foster baby born to an addicted mother. Another couple picked up their entire life and moved to Bali to open a restaurant...and, finally, a wedding singer who fell in love with a bridesmaid.

Today we have an update from an episode we did back in April of last year. In Season Two we talked to Samantha and her wife Laura. The two of them originally fell in love in college. They got married quickly and had four sons. Samantha was born a man, but always felt like something else, always felt like a woman. After thirteen years of marriage Samantha transitioned. When we spoke to Laura and Samantha they were navigating their new relationship as parents, partners and wives. It was an episode about what it takes to stand by your partner as your partner changes into a new person. But relationships are complicated. Marriage is complicated. Last summer the two women realized that they both needed something different from one another. I spoke to Samantha this month about what it is like now for her to navigate her life as a single lesbian woman.

We have more little love stories for you...Three more stories that come from our own listeners. They’re short and sweet and all of them reminded us about the many ways we can commit to one another. In one a librarian meets a genuinely nice man online, in another moving into a camper van saves a couple’s relationship and finally two kids figure out how to make long distance work.

For this episode update we're going back to a show we did with Doree and Matt in season one. Their episode was called Hope is a Dangerous Thing. When we left them Doree and Matt were trying to get pregnant and it wasn’t working for them. They were on their fifth round of IVF and they were both wearing a little thin. That episode aired in August of 2018. Doree and Matt did do that fifth round of IVF and Doree got pregnant soon after we aired...She had a baby boy, Henry, in April of last year. We talked to them last week about what it's like to finally become parents after trying for so long and what they wish they could tell the two people they were when they started this journey. Photo by Stephanie Entin.

Some of the best love stories come in small packages. That’s why we asked you, our listeners, to send us voicemails of your own love stories. We’ll be running a few of them before Season Four starts. So here are three mini love stories to tide you over until we launch Season Four in April. We’ve got a dirty dog that led to love on a camping trip, a couple that learned to meet in the middle over the course of two decades and a middle school relationship that persevered against all odds.

Marriage is full of challenges and tiny victories. Five years ago our host Jo Piazza decided to test her new marriage to her husband Nick by climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro as a couple. It was harder than either of them expected and had an ending no one saw coming. Jo talked about the trip and the climb on iHeart Radio's new podcast “A Way to Go,” from iHeart and Fathom. We’ve got a little bit of that conversation for you right now, hope you enjoy. For the full episode, please go to: https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/awaytogo

At the age of 26, Katherine Wolf nearly died from a brainstem stroke. She was newly married and the mother of a six month old baby boy. The doctors performed a rare and complicated 16 hour surgery and removed 60% of her cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls most motor function and many essential nerves. Katharine spent two months in a coma, When she woke up she had to relearn how to breathe, talk, eat and move her body. From then on Katherine and her husband Jay were birthed into a new couple and a new family. They’ve had to redefine absolutely everything. But what they’ve come to realize is that on the other side of suffering, you learn that some things are better because of what you've been through. No one wants terrible pain, or suffering, or tragedy to come, but it can have this tremendous effect of informing the rest of your life.

Buffy and Pat’s son Kevin passed away from a brain tumor when he was just nine years old. That was six years ago. The death of a child isn’t something you get through. It isn’t something that goes away. It’s something you live and grow with every day. And that’s...what Buffy and Pat are doing. They've walked through fire and come out alive but forever changed.

"Every couple we know has this fantasy of quitting their corporate jobs and finding a way to make a living doing what they love. But for most people it’s just that— a fantasy. Rich and Sara Combs have turned that fantasy into a reality. They quit their big jobs in San Francisco to renovate and rent out two properties down in Joshua Tree. Now they’re working on a second property, an inn right outside of Saguaro National Park in Arizona. They’re living the dream. But is the dream as good as everyone imagines it is? Is the reality ever as good as the fantasy? Fixing these houses has taught them how to be comfortable when things go wrong...whether it’s with a home or with their relationship. "

Neal had a classic mid-life crisis on his 50th birthday. He bought a Harley, got his first tattoo, had an affair with a women twenty years his junior. But there’s more to the story than that. He’d gotten caught up in a bad business deal and was sentenced to four years in a federal state prison. He and his wife Allison got divorced. Allison was left to sell their home during the housing crisis since the great depression, take care of her ailing father and get their kids off to college. But that’s just the beginning of Allison and Neal’s story. The real story is how they found their way back to one another.

Last year Brad and Matt Kirouac gave up their very comfortable and secure lives in a beautiful loft in a gorgeous neighborhood in Chicago to live as nomads in an RV with the goal of visiting all of 61 the country’s national parks. Their new lifestyle challenges every single part of their relationships and they’ve been forced to dig deep to see if they really want to be in this together.

Military wives are taught early on how to live without their soldiers. During their two decade marriage Anna and Mike have moved 12 times for Mike’s job as a lieutenant colonel in the army, all while giving birth to and raising seven kids. Sometimes Mike is with the family but sometimes he’s deployed far away in a war zone, place where it’s difficult to talk, places where Anna is often scared for his life. The distance makes you realize what's important very quickly. This is a story of how Anna makes their family work without Mike and how they've found ways to build a life together all over the world while Mike serves his country.

This is a story of boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl, marries girl. But then…..girl falls in love with another girl. And boy….well he stays in the picture. We hear a lot more about polyamory these days than we used to, but we don’t hear enough about how it actually works, how a family can be crafted with three loving and consensual adults. Today Alex, Paul and Jackie live together and raise a child together and they want the world to know that this is their normal.

Erica and Spencer met in an online widow support group. They’d both recently lost their spouses. Within months they were married and working to blend their eleven kids together into one family. Today’s episode is about blending families, learning to parent someone else’s children and finding ways to honor the spouse that came before you. It’s never going to be easy or perfect. It’s a journey and a beautiful one.

After Alexei Brovarnik received a K-1 visa he had 90 days to marry his American fiance Loren. The entire engagement and lead up to their wedding was captured by the reality television show 90 Day Fiance on TLC. For better or worse they lived the beginning of their marriage under a media microscope, enduring constant criticism and judgement and watching their most intimate moments, good and bad, played back to them on the small screen and the Internet. It’s so easy to judge someone else’s marriage, especially a marriage that we’re watching unfold on television, like a soap opera. But Loren and Alex have no regrets about putting it all out there for everyone to see.

In 2017 a doctor told Brian Wallach he might only have six months left to live. He was only 37, but he’d started having trouble grasping a pen. His hands would shake. His wife Sandra was the one who told him he had to see a doctor. That’s when he learned he had ALS. Instead of turning inwards Sandra and Brian, both former Obama staffers, are using their unique skills from working on campaigns, as lawyers and with nonprofits to try to raise $100 million for ALS research in the hopes of finding a cure to save Brian’s life.

Only 1% of the people who jump off of the Golden Gate Bridge survive. Kevin Hines was that 1%. From the moment his feet left the bridge he knew he didn’t want to die. Surviving that leap sent him into a psychiatric ward. That’s where he met his wife Margaret. She loved him for his honesty and his bravery and how he wasn’t afraid to show the parts of him that were still broken. Kevin still lives with mental illness. He still lives with suicidal inclinations. But every time those thoughts even begin to creep into his brain he turns to Margaret and says—“I need help now.”

Committed is back for season 3! On October 9th host Jo Piazza will once again peel back the curtain on a marriage to bring you the intimate and raw stories of couples trying to make it work. This season, Jo talks with a couple reeling from fatal a diagnosis of ALS, two husbands who sold their home for a nomadic life on the open road living in an RV, a husband and wife who decided to invite another woman into their marriage, a couple who broadcast their engagement to the world on the show 90 Day Finance, and many more. So join us for season 3. We’re all still figuring this out… together.

On this bonus episode, Jo shares an excerpt from her travel memoir, How to Be Married, that inspired this podcast.

We followed Sarah and her fiancé Spider for nine months, through their wedding planning, trying to have a baby, a miscarriage and through Spider’s detention with ICE just a few months before their wedding. Sarah depends on Spider for more than love and emotional support. She’s legally blind and she relies on Spider to help her get through her day. She can’t drive. There aren’t many jobs she can do. Sarah and Spider have always been nervous about Spider’s immigration status but it took on a new weight and meaning once they got engaged and started to plan to have a family. They decided they wouldn’t let Spider’s status stop them from having a family. This is their journey to try to figure out how to live in a constant state of limbo.

Ashley DiBella is so proud of her husband Juan and his work. She wishes she could sing it from the rooftops, but she can’t because a lot of people have very strong opinions about what Juan does. Now Ashley wants to set the record straight about what it’s really like to be married to a border patrol agent, the dangers her husband faces, the things she’s scared of and the good things he does that aren’t usually mentioned by the media. This is the first episode in our two part season finale. The first part is what it’s like to be married to a border patrol agent. The second is what it’s like to be in love with and want to marry someone who crosses the border illegally.

Shannon is a survivor. As a child she was repeatedly abused and raped. She became pregnant by her rapist at age 12. She wanted to commit suicide as a teenager. All of the trauma made her believe she wasn't capable of love. She constantly felt like she had to earn love, affection and protection. And then she met Lee in college. Lee had never experienced abuse or trauma, but he knew he wanted to make Shannon feel safe and loved. Today Shannon and Lee are married with six children. This is their story of strength and bravery, of what it takes to rebuild your life and embrace love, marriage and parenthood after a childhood of abuse and assault. This is a story about what it takes to be a partner who learns how to make that survivor feel safe and how to build a family that looks nothing like the family you grew up with. For a long time Shannon wasn’t sure if she even wanted kids. Growing up the way she had was enough to make her think she might not be able to be the kind of parent she wanted to be. But meeting Lee and falling in love with him changed that.

What’s it like to be married to a famous professional athlete. Samantha Didn’t know much about professional race car driving when she met the bad boy NASCAR star Kyle Busch. But after they fell in love she was thrust into the wild traveling circus of NASCAR. It wasn’t part of her plan. But real life isn’t about plans. Kyle and Samatha were about to embark on an incredible journey of love, marriage, infertility and hope.

Caroline Van Hemert and her husband Pat were in their mid-thirties and the realities of adulthood catching up with them. They knew they wanted to take a grand adventure before starting a family so the pair set off on a six month, 4,000 mile expedition from the Pacific rainforest to the Arctic coast, a journey that was beautiful, harrowing and, at times, life-threatening. And in many ways that grand trip prepared Pat and Caroline to take care of each other and themselves even better before having their two sons. This is a story of love and adventure and the places where the two find one another.

Vause and Kayden were teenagers when they met and fell in love. Today they're the first queer married couple to work together in a legal brothel. This is how they found their way to a healthy marriage, through communication, setting boundaries and finding careers that give them confidence and self-worth.

Larry and Linda Drain have been forced to separate after 33 years of marriage so that Linda can get the healthcare benefits she needs to save her life. Linda has a severe form of epilepsy and the medications that help keep her potentially deadly seizures at bay cost thousands of dollars per month. But if they stay married they're in a sort of purgatory where they don't qualify for subsidized benefits and can't afford private insurance. And so now Larry and Linda have no choice but to live on opposite sides of the city. Sometimes they can't even afford gas to see one another. This is how they're dealing with the intense emptiness of being forced to live apart from the person you love the most.

Levi and Jared are ready to get engaged. But Levi has been keeping his relationship with Jared a secret from his family and that has to change if they want to move forward. This is a story about being honest, completely and radically honest, with yourself and the people you love before you get married. I asked Levi if he was scared, scared to tell his story in such a public way, if he wanted to use a pseudonym. He didn't. He’s trying so hard to be brave, to be honest. Levi wants to tell his love story now....all of it.

Raakhee and Agan had finally gotten the exact life they wanted. Then their five month old daughter was diagnosed with cancer. That could have broken them, but instead it made them and their relationship so much stronger. Raakhee’s thoughts on gratitude and embracing adversity are exactly the kinds of things we should all try to remember on our own good days and bad.

Laura and her husband met in college. They got married quickly and had four sons. Laura’s husband was born a man, but always felt like something else, always felt like a woman. After thirteen years of marriage Laura's husband transitioned into a woman named Samantha. Now Laura and Samantha are navigating their new relationship as parents, partners and wives.

Allison was five months pregnant when her husband Dave had a stroke on the plane on the way to their Hawaiian babymoon. Their entire lives changed in the blink of an eye. Allison had no idea whether her husband would survive this traumatic brain injury, and if he didn't survive if he would ever be the same. She began to write him letters in the hopes that he would one day be able to read them with her and their daughter.