Dr. Phil & Robin McGraw Open Up About Their Relationship After 50 Years of Marriage

Dr. Phil and Robin McGraw have so much to celebrate. The power couple marked their 50th wedding anniversary on August 14. This milestone was not lost on the two knowing what it takes to maintain a successful marriage, let alone in the public eye within the world of tabloids. They’ve leaned on each other through all the trials and tribulations. 

Professionally, Dr. Phil had Robin by his side for 21 seasons of his popular daytime talk show that wrapped in 2023. The pair have continued to work together on various projects including podcasts and their branded Merit Street Media network. They have two sons Jay, 46, and Jordan, 39, along with four grandchildren that keep them busy. 

Here Dr. Phil and Robin sit down for a candid conversation about their lives today away from cameras.

You recently sat down together for The Dr. Phil Podcast in honor of your 50th wedding anniversary. How was it getting to have that conversation? 

Dr. Phil McGraw: Yeah, when you sit down to talk about it, it kind of hits you. I’d say 50 years spans a lot of time and a lot of events, you know, the birth of your children, watching them grow up. Watching them have children and you’re starting to see things kind of cycle back around. Everything you did with your kids, you’re seeing them do with their children. And then it starts to hit you. Wow, a lot has happened. It’s been 50 years.

Robin McGraw: It’s kind of crazy, but we really have had a lot of fun this entire year looking forward to this anniversary because we’re really fun, and we’ve had a lot of fun over 50 years, but the anticipation of being able to say, “We did it, we’re at 50 years.” We’ve just really enjoyed it. Reflecting over the 50 years was really meaningful.

I think it also reaffirmed you’re solid as a couple too. Maybe even a weight was lifted off your shoulders because you got to clear up any misconceptions. When you’re a public figure and so many things are being said about you, you may want to say something, but you don’t really have the right platform. Would you say this was a chance for you guys to do that? 

Robin: I agree, yes. 

Dr. Phil: You know, both of us came from, I have to say, dysfunctional homes. But they all hung in there. I mean, both of us had real long-term relationships with our parents. My parents were married for more than 50 years. Your parents were married for more than 50 years. So it is kind of a generational legacy that carries on. Our oldest son just had his 20th anniversary, and our youngest son is coming up on six years. You know we kind of make a choice and stick with it, which I think is a good thing. 

How did you guys mark the occasion, or are you marking the occasion?

Robin: I’m going to answer this one because it’s such a beautiful celebration. My favorite city in the world really is Paris. And I’ve been there a couple of times on girls’ trips. Philip and I have been there a couple of times, and he actually put the entire trip together. He surprised me and said, “What do you want to do first?’ And I said, “I don’t care, whatever you want to do.” And he said, “Well, here’s what I’ve planned.” And he put together a beautiful trip to Paris for us.

Dr. Phil: We had a great time. Although we live in Dallas and it’s triple digits here. It’s been over 100 forever. We went to Paris and sure enough, it was 100 degrees in Paris during the day, but at least in the evenings, it really cooled off, and we had a great time. We took a private cruise on the river and saw the city from the river to see all the lights and stuff, which we’d never done before. As many times as we’ve been to Paris, we’ve never done that, and it really is different to see all of that, so just the two of us got a boat and went on the Seine. It was a great time.

Robin: So beautiful and even as many times as we’ve been there, which is maybe less than 10, but over the years we learned so many things. Our guide that was driving us in the boat told us so many things about the city because we had no idea how truly long the Louvre is. And just a quick little bit of information. He said that if you went through the Louvre and looked at every piece of art, everything they have displayed to see, it would take you three months, 24/7 around the clock to see everything.

Phil: Yeah, we learned a lot. It was great. We stayed in our favorite boutique hotel there, and it was great. It was a wonderful trip. So I think we properly marked it. spend a lot of time talking to our boys and their wives and our grandkids, so it’s really a special time.

How do you normally celebrate these anniversaries? 

Phil: You know we’re really a kind of stay-at-home people. We don’t party a lot. We don’t go out a lot. We kind of just enjoy each other’s company, but when it comes to anniversary and her birthdays, I don’t pay much attention to mine because I’ve had so many of them, but we really do kind of pay attention to the anniversaries. We’ll usually go on a trip or get together with our kids and their kids and close friends. Mark it with some kind of special dinner or something like that. 

Robin: I will say my favorite dessert is wedding cake, and has been forever, so we always have a wedding cake on our anniversary. Usually it’s a fairly large one. When we were first married, we started out with maybe a small one, but now our children will be in charge of it, or we’ve actually had friends send us a wedding cake. We’ve had more than one sometimes, but we always have a wedding cake on our anniversary.

Phil: Yes, we’ve had 50 of those. That’s 50 times we’ve had a big wedding cake. It’s really good.

When you realize that you were each other’s person, what was that moment? What was the aha moment for you?

Robin: That’s a sweet question. I’m going to tell you I believe in love at first sight. And while it’s been reported, which is true, when I first met Philip, the evening I met him, he had been sick. It was at his home, at his parents’ home. We were the only two there, it’s a long story, but I walked out, waiting for his sister, who was a good friend of mine, and I walked out, and he was sitting in the room. He had been sick. He goes, “Who are you?” Kind of like that, and I was like, “Whoa, are you always this grouchy.” But we ended up sitting together, watching a movie, and he asked me out for a date the next night, and we’ve been together ever since. That’s 54 years ago. And I knew that night I was going to marry this man. I knew that I was in love with him, and we were going to be married. I needed him, and he needed me.

Phil: Yeah, I knew that night she was going to marry me too. 

Robin: Oh, he says this all the time. Okay, we disagree on this one point, but go ahead.

Phil: Well, we went for a walk, and we’re right square in front of a church. Right when we’re in front of the church, she says. “So, how do you feel about marriage?” And I’m like, “Right now?” I mean, we were square in front of a church, right in front of these big double doors, and I thought, “My God, is she going to walk me through the doors right now?” But that wasn’t the plan. She wanted to know right up front, am I going to waste time on you if you’re not interested? She screened me right up front. 

Robin: That is true. But it wasn’t on the first date, it was on the third date.

Phil: Okay. Of course, she’s always right. That’s how I have stayed married for 50 years.

I feel like with marriages, we go through seasons. Was there a particularly challenging one for you that you guys worked through that really showed the strength of your marriage?

Phil: I think it’s different, I’m sure, for her than it is for me, but when we had children. We made a decision. I think she was born to be a wife, mother, and grandmother. I think that’s what she was put on this earth to do. But we made an important decision. We agreed that the children were joining our life. We weren’t joining their lives. Everything was not going to revolve around them because being in the profession I’m in, I told her up front. I said, “Look, I expect we’re going to be married a long time. And they’re gonna be here for probably less than 25 percent or a third of it, and I don’t want to get to the end of that, where they go off to school or something and look across the table and say didn’t I used to know you? So we need to really focus on keeping our relationship active and alive.” I’ve got to say she is really great about that. 

Over these 50 years, and when they left. I was like, “Oh good. One out of the nest.” She was like, “Oh my God, no. This is horrible, it’s horrible.” I remember we dropped Jay off at college, and she said, “I didn’t teach him to cook enough, I didn’t teach him to iron. He’s going to be wrinkled and hungry.” And I’m like, “No, he’s gone. That’s great. He’s going to have the time of his life. We had two completely different reactions to our first one going off, and our second one. We looked at it completely differently, but because we had our relationship well intact, we were able to support one another in that. But that empty nest time, it gets pretty quiet around there for most people, but I think we were pretty active, and seized it, you know, seized it. 

Robin: He’s right. He’s so right. We did have that conversation, and I will say, I love how he loves me. And so I did not want that to change it all. We have always put each other and our relationship first.

 

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The Dr. Phil show was part of your lives for more than 20 years. It was a routine. How was it weathering through that new normal after? I know you have other projects going on, but it’s a different kind of busy I bet. What was that transition like now three years later? 

Phil: Well, you know, those 21 years were wonderful. But it was a transition. When you’re there every day and you’re preparing, it’s not doing the show so much as it is the preparation. I do deep preparation when I’m dealing with guests and all of that sort of thing, so every night is spent preparing for the shows that are coming up. And that gets to be a heavy toll. I’m not crying about it. I think it was great. Robin has always been super supportive and was there for every single show. not just in the audience, but as an ambassador for the fight against domestic violence, helping with children and adults both. She was a huge ambassador for court-appointed special advocates. She brought so much to the show and to the brand, we were in that together. Now I have a network that is building, and the world is changing, everything is going digital so much. And she’s just as supportive now as she ever was. 

Everything we do, we do together in one way or the other. It’s all the way from her doing my makeup to helping choose topics and.do things that we do. You know, we’re still just as much hooked up in what I’m doing as we’ve ever been. So, it changed the routine. That is different, but the commitment and the engagement is very much the same, and we’re still very much involved together. I don’t think I’ll ever retire. I don’t know what I would do. I think I’d go insane if I had to sit around and garden, which is fine for some people. It’s just not for me. So I stay busy, and she’s very supportive in all of that, and very engaged in all of it.

Are you still finding new things about each other? Are you learning new things about each other?

Phil: Oh, let me tell you. There is not a boring moment with this woman. You have no idea. It’s like rolling backwards down a hill. It’s something all the time, and I think what attracted me about her originally was, I don’t know, what word can I use? She was spunky from the very beginning.

Robin: I keep him on his toes, what can I say? I do. And it’s fun. I find something new almost every day to surprise him with. Even if it’s the way I may act around, to be funny or I present something new, and look at what I learned today, or whatever, but I’m always surprising him. 

Dr. Phil: Yeah, for some reason, she’s always cracked me up. I think that’s a big part of it. She’s always good for a laugh. Yeah.

The world has some serious things going on right now. You guys tackle a lot of serious topics in your respective projects. What do you guys do to kind of escape or wind down, or an activity you like to do together or watch? 

Phil: Oh, yeah, we’ll find something that is off-beat. We watch a lot of British television shows and we’ll binge watch them.  Hopefully it starts early because she’ll say, “Well, one more. Let’s just watch one more.” It’ll look like it’ll be three o’clock in the morning, and we’re watching the final episode of some British crime show that we’ve got hooked into on Acorn TV or something. But we love to watch that stuff. 

Robin: And I’ll just be honest with you, he’ll fall asleep through about a third of them. I just keep watching, and I’ll say, “You know, you did sleep through this part. But keep going. Let’s just keep going, and I’ll catch you up.” 

Dr. Phil: I’m listening. . 

Robin: He is like, “No, no, no, I didn’t.” I’ll go, “Well, tell me what happened then?” 

Phil: I get a recap, and I close the gap pretty fast. 

Robin: But we do, we binge watch, we love it.

Phil: I’ve produced these, I’ve produced these dramas, I know what the storyline’s gonna be. 

You were part of the daytime talk TV for so long. With linear networks, we’re seeing where there are less and less of these talk shows on the air. Maybe that’s why you made the move in some ways ahead of all this change. But what’s your thoughts on the landscape today?

Phil: That’s a very insightful question. You obviously know the landscape and the terrain. I think people are getting their information in different ways. I think it’s changing as we’re sitting here speaking. People are getting their information on their computers, their phones, their iPads, laptops. I think people willing to sit in front of a television and passively be fed information for an hour, for example, is rapidly on the decline. I know the last three or four years that I was doing the Dr. Phil on CBS, which is a great organization. They were great to me. I’m still in business with them in different ways now. My biggest competition was not some other linear show. It was me on the internet.

College kids and others watching me on YouTube or whatever, they’d binge-watch Dr. Phil episodes or clips.  I think you have to meet the viewer where they are, and that’s why the content we’re making now is geared towards digital. We’re in I think 125 million and rising homes on channels where I’ve got 40 million subscribers across all the digital platforms and FAST channels and all of that. You have to meet the viewer where they are and give them what they want. And if it’s a playlist of all the best shows from the library of over 20 years, which I own, or the new things that I’m making now, you get to meet them where they are and give them a choice to choose what they want to see. Get in, get out, and move on. And I’ve always tried to stay ahead of that curve, and I think we’re doing a great job of it.

Robin: I love that we no longer hear or read that he retired. He has not. A few months after daytime, they went, “Oh, I’m so sorry you retired.” We don’t hear that anymore. Now they know he did not retire.

As you’re celebrating 50 years, tell us what is the key to a successful marriage in 2026? 

Robin: I think the most important thing is before we got married, we had a lot of conversations about what we considered a successful marriage and a successful relationship. My goal was to learn what makes him unhappy. What could I do, or what would I do or say that would make him unhappy? I found that out. We had those honest conversations, and I choose never to do that. I know what buttons I could push if I wanted to make him unhappy and irritate him. I choose not to do that because I know what it’s going to take, and I’m not going to do that. And I found out what can I do to make you happy? What can I do to be your safe place to fall and always know I’m going to be your person? And I choose to do that every day. I made that choice. I know what will make him happy, and I choose to do that. 

Phil: I have to echo that. She really does do that, and I make an effort to do the same thing. I think it’s about managing expectations. If you go into a relationship in 2026 and your expectation is, from a guy’s standpoint, that your wife’s going to meet you at the back door every day, whether you both work or not. That she’s going to get home five minutes before you and meet you at the back door naked with a martini, that’s not going to happen. You’re going to share space, time, responsibility, money. You’re going to have a division of labor. You’re going to problem-solve together, and there are going to be ups and downs. If you expect that then you’re going to go, “This is what marriage is, this is what it’s supposed to be, no problem. Deal with it and move on.” But if you expect some romantic version, some rom-com version, marriage or relationship, you’re going to think, “Oh my gosh. it’s not happening.” You have to manage your expectations and get in and work at it. 

I think people get divorced too fast in America. And I think if people will run through those spots, you get through the rough spots and then you say, “Wow, getting a divorce is not an answer.” All you’re doing is changing one set of problems for another set of problems. That’s no answer. And we’ve never spoken that word in our home, or even in our relationship. We’ve never spoken the D word one time in 50 years, and I suspect we never will because we’re in it, and we’re glad. we are, and I’m glad we’ve stuck it out.