Peter Gallagher’s Marriage Advice? Don’t Get Divorced.

Modern Love

The New York Times

Nytimes, Redemption, Society & Culture, New York Times, Love, Essay, Storytelling, Loss, Nyt

4.4 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Actor Peter Gallagher (Sex, Lies, & Videotape and The O.C.) met his wife, Paula Harwood, over forty years ago in college in a stairwell meet-cute. Since then, they’ve maintained a loving marriage and managed to raise a family while navigating the world of show business. We talked to Peter on his 41st wedding anniversary, and he read us the Modern Love essay “Failing in Marriage Does Not Mean Failing at Marriage” by Joe Blair. Despite the essayist being kicked out of the house by his wife five times, the couple managed to remain married and learn that a relationship can mean trying together and failing together. Reflecting on the essay, Peter gave us his advice for staying the course. Peter Gallagher will be performing on Broadway this fall in Delia Ephron’s play ‘Left on Tenth.’

Transcript

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0:00.0	Love now and all.
0:03.0	And you're from now.
0:05.0	The love was stronger than anything.
0:08.0	I feel a love for love.
0:09.0	And I love you more than anything.
0:12.0	There's still love. more than anything. From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
0:17.6	This is Modern Love.
0:19.8	Recently on the show, we've been celebrating 20 years of the Modern Love column asking
0:24.2	some of our favorite people to read essays that they connect to personally.
0:27.8	Today we're closing out our season with actor Peter Gallagher.
0:38.0	Peter got famous mostly playing a particular kind of role. Skeasy, cheating, lying men.
0:41.0	That was back in the late 80s, early 90s in movies like Sex, Lies, and
0:45.6	Video tape and American Beauty. But if you miss that chapter of Peter's career,
0:50.7	you might associate him with a totally different kind of character.
0:54.0	To many younger fans, he's Sandy Cohen, the loving devoted dad and husband on the TV
1:02.2	show, The O.C.
1:04.9	And now, having met Peter myself, I am very happy to report that Peter is way more
1:10.0	like Sandy than his other roles.
1:12.1	It's just so clear he really loves his family.
1:14.9	He showed me his phone background when he came into the studio. It's a photo of his wife,
1:19.1	Paula Harwood, from when they first met. And if you look him up, his Instagram is a total dad
1:24.5	Instagram full of long captions bragging about his kids and cute selfies with Paula.
	...

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