Phil Donahue, who died on Sunday at age 88, will long be remembered at the king of daytime television.
Starting in 1967 at a local Ohio station, he immediately set a new tone for what a talk show could be by tackling some of the most taboo topics of the day. His unique approach, which included making audience participation fundamental, proved wildly successful, and over the next 29 years, he would record more than 6,000 episodes of “The Phil Donahue Show” — shortened to “Donahue” during his heyday in the late 1970s and ’80s.
He was such a juggernaut that in Oprah Winfrey’s early days, she was told it would be impossible to compete. In an Instagram post on Monday that included a glitzy black-and-white photo of them together, Winfrey said, “There wouldn’t have been an Oprah Show without Phil Donahue being the first to prove that daytime talk and women watching should be taken seriously.”
In a lengthy 2001 interview with the Television Academy, Donahue said he struggled the most with questions like, “Who was your best guest?” These questions are easy to ask but impossible to answer, he said.
Even if Donahue himself was loath to pick the most memorable moments, some episodes do stand out from the pack. Here are three that explain how he endured.