Episodes
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Vince and Madison met the way a lot of millennials are meeting these days—on Hinge.
Vincent Madison, it met in the way that a lot of millennials are meeting these days. On hinge. They went on one date and they've spent every single day together since then a year and a half ago.
Vince and Madison are still young and they're still toeing the waters of this commitment thing, but they are in it! Not too long after they got together their relationship went viral when Madison posted a video of Vince crying on TikTok. It went viral and racked up more than 4 million views. -
Buddy Woodall is serving three life sentences for murder. In January he'll celebrate his 22nd wedding anniversary to his wife Kristy. When Buddy was sentenced he asked Kristy to divorce him, he begged her to divorce him. She refused. She says she will stay with him until the very end. This is their love story. It starts when they were 15 years old and Kristy hit Buddy in the head with a volleyball in gym class. It takes them through the difficult early days of their marriage when they were just trying to make ends meet and it follows them through Buddy's arrest, his trial, his sentencing and now his time in Telfair State Prison. Buddy and Kristy believe they have a love that transcends the prison walls.
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Missing episodes?
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Back in 2018 we talked to Kristy and Buddy Woodall. If you don't remember that episode, on March 16, 2001 Buddy Woodall was arrested for the double murder of Lavelle Lynn and Robert Van Allen which would be known in Georgia as the Labor Day Murders. Buddy is currently serving three consecutive life sentences and still claims his innocence. This week are are catching up with Kristy to talk about how she still holds onto hope for Buddy's release even though it gets harder every single day.
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Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur met in college in 2002. They bonded instantly. Fast-forward to 2010 when they founded the popular fashion and design website Of a Kind. Since then the two women have created many, many things together, most recently the publishing company, 831 Stories.
They are business partners and lifelong friends. This season we're expanding the scope of Committed. Because not all commitment resides within a marriage. In many ways a business partnership is like a marriage and frankly, a marriage is also like a business partnership.
There's so much we can learn from all different kinds of commitment. And that's what we'll be exploring in the coming months. Today, we're going to talk to Claire and Erica about creating and building things together and the lessons a business partnership can give a romantic partnership.
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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.
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Many of our committed guests have become like family to us. We've stayed in touch and followed their journeys. Some of the pairs have stayed together and some haven't. That's the cycle of commitment. Love doesn't have to last forever to be beautiful and to contribute to our lives. When we first met Samantha (episode SUDDENLY SAMANTHA), she had just transitioned. After 13 years of marriage, Samantha and her wife, Laura, we're adjusting to how that transition would impact their marriage.
Laura and Samantha eventually split up and Samantha began navigating the world as a single lesbian woman. Today we are talking to Samantha four years later about how she has rebuilt her life and found love again.
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This is the first of one of our BEST OF COMMITTED episodes. We're going to be compiling different shows on various themes in the hopes of both inspiring you and perhaps starting a conversation. One of the things that's amazed me about the couples on this show is the ability for love and commitment to withstand some of the worst tragedies that you could ever imagine. And it's these episodes that have personally given me hope in some really dark times.
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What makes a great marriage, or even a good marriage? Today we're talking to Frances Mayes, bestselling author of the mega-hit novel Under the Tuscan Sun which has been a touchpoint for women going through any kind of life change or reinvention for nearly 30 years. Now Frances has a new novel called A Great Marriage, to which she brings a lifetime of wisdom from her own two marriages and her parents' tumultuous union. I adore this quote from the book: "You can hammer out a good marriage. Great is a whole other thing. Boiled down, way down, a great marriage happens when two people are big enough to want more for the partner than they want for themselves. Not just as much. More.”
Order A Great Marriage today.
Support the show and get 50% off your first Factor box, plus 20% off your next month with code COMMITTED50 at https://www.factormeals.com/committed50
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What happens when you meet the right person at the wrong time? In this heartwarming episode, Nina and Mario recount their love story that began with a chance meeting in Central Park in 1999. From exchanging shy hellos to an unexpected reunion two decades later, their romance is straight out of a movie. Discover how they reconnected after years apart, overcame personal challenges, and are now planning the adventure of a lifetime together. This is a journey of love, separation, and a beautiful reconnection that brought two passionate souls back together when they needed one another the most.
Learn more about Nina and Mario's GoFundMe for their Sicily adventure here and follow Nina here.
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Casey and Steven met on a study abroad program in Morocco when they were juniors in college. After school they traveled to Beijing to teach English and then to Mali to live in Timbuktu. Travel does something to a relationship. It creates intimacies and speeds up the way we learn about one another. Now, two decades later, Casey and Steven have opened an Inn together in the Catskills, they have two daughters and they have found a sense of balance and give and take in their relationship that allows the other one to thrive.
Follow Steven here to see more of his art and his wonderful children's books.
You can pre-order Steven's new book What is Color? here.
Check out The Spruceton Inn here.
VISIT BetterHelp.com/committed today to get 10% off your first month.
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Today we have a very special episode of the podcast Love Letters in our feed. Ever since Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey was a kid, music has played a major role in her life. “Eye of the Tiger” got her pumped for basketball games. She caught sets from Joan Baez and Melissa Etheridge working as a cocktail waitress. When she came out in her early 20s, she found solace in the Indigo Girls. These days, the governor uses music to center herself, especially at hard moments. She and her partner, Joanna Lydgate, sit down with Meredith to talk about how music helps them in their lives and in their relationship.
Get more Love Letters here.
This episode is brought to you by Better Help. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/COMMITTED, and get on your way to being your best self.
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Jessica found out her husband Steve was gay a year and a half into her marriage. They broke up, got back together and tried to make it work because they were living in a very conservative Christian community. And in the midst of it all she met Matt and fell hard for him. Eventually Jessica and Matt got together and today they work with Jessica's ex-husband Steve on a podcast.
They share stories of love, marriage, coming out, divorce, remarriage, and co-parenting to help others know they are not alone. They are trying to break down stereo-types about what divorce and co-parenting look like every single day. It isn't always easy and it definitely isn't always perfect but they are constantly trying to find new ways to support one another.
Listen and subscribe to the Husband in Law Podcast here.
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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.
Learn more about A Novel Idea here.
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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.
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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.
Learn more about Manny and Becca's porn addiction courses at their Team Vulnerable website here.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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