He is an American media personality, writer, and film producer and he is known to have married twice, so who is Phil Donahue first wife? Who did the TV personality marry first out of the two women that he married?
Phil Donahue first wife left him after they lived together for some decades in a marriage that produced five children, he would go on to marry another one. In this article, we take a look at the first wife of the television personality, Phil Donahue.
Who his first wife is has become topical because this was a marriage that had produced five children. Who is Phil Donahue?
Phil Donahue Biography
Donahue was born on December 21, 1935, into a middle-class, devout Irish Catholic family in Cleveland, Ohio. His father, Phillip Donahue, was a furniture salesman, while his mother, Catherine (McClory), worked as a shoe clerk in a department store.
In 1949, he graduated from the Our Lady of the Angels elementary school in Cleveland’s West Park area.
In suburban Lakewood, Ohio, Phil Donahue attended St. Edward High School, an all-boys Catholic private high school administered by the Congregation of Holy Cross that acted as a college-prep program. Phil Donahue was a member of the school’s first graduating class.
We are talking about Phil Donahue first wife here because of the career that took him to many places including earning him the privilege to interview prominent personalities such as John F Kennedy, Johnny Carson, Malcolm X, Muhammed Ali and many others. So how did his career begin?
Career
At Cleveland’s KYW radio and television, Phil Donahue got his start in the industry as a production assistant. He was offered the chance to step in one day when the appointed announcer failed to show up.
He began working as a bank check sorter in Albuquerque, New Mexico, soon after receiving his degree. Later, he accepted a position as the program director for WABJ radio in Adrian, Michigan.
His interviews with Jimmy Hoffa and Billie Sol Estes were shown on television nationwide when he eventually attained the post of morning news anchor at WHIO-TV in Dayton, Ohio. He’d been a stringer for the CBS Evening News in the past.
All this while as he tried to build his career, was Phil Donahue first wife with him?
From 1963 through 1967, Phil Donahue hosted Conversation Piece, a phone-in afternoon discussion show on WHIO radio in Dayton.
On November 6, 1967, Donahue departed WHIO and moved his chat show to television on WLWD (now WDTN), also in Dayton, with The Phil Donahue Show.
The program was initially only broadcast on stations owned by the Crosley Broadcasting Corporation, which also owned WLWD and later adopted the name of its parent company Avco Company.
But The Phil Donahue Show began airing in all 50 states in January 1970.
It is clear why he is so popular so who is Phil Donahue first wife?
Phil Donahue First Wife
Marge Cooney is Phil Donahue first wife to whom he got married on February 1st, 1958 but they ended in divorce in 1975. Phil and his first wife, Marge Cooney had five children; Michael, Kevin, Daniel, Mary Rose, and James.
She is well known for being the famous wife of Phil Donahue, about whom nothing was known before their union.
We are unable to tell much about Phil Donahue first wife Marge Cooney early years because there is little information accessible on her siblings, family, educational history, or parents.
After the collapse of the marriage to his first wife, Phil got married to actress Marlo Thomas on May 21, 1980.
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