As a parent, how do you transcend the regular run of the mill parent/child relationship? How do you turn your bond into a real friendship? When Jessica's two kids were young, she pulled them out of traditional school, began homeschooling them and started traveling abroad. They left the U S a decade ago in search of a more authentic path. Since then they've lived in an RV in Europe for three years, learned to sail and crossed the Atlantic together as a family. This has been challenging and...

Janae and Tricia are sisters in law. That means they're related by marriage, but they didn't have to choose each other. They didn't have to choose their bond or their commitment or their friendship. But they did. And for years, the two of them have been each other's rock. Back in September of 2023, this bond helped them get through an unimaginable tragedy. Trisha was camping with her family in upstate New York when her nine-year-old daughter Charlotte was abducted from the campground....

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...

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...

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.

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...

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.

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....

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.

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....

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

Jack Kerouac but make it a girl with braids. Carrie Bradshaw, but without the sex, and also braids. An American Icon. An American Odyssey. American propaganda. Violently so, in some cases. Laura Ingalls Wilder is evergreen. For better or worse. Since the first Little House book was published in 1932, generations of readers have flocked to Laura’s cozy stories of the Ingalls family settling the Western frontier. The series inspired a TV show, pageants, and entire fashion lines. Behind this...

Are more women having affairs? Or are they finally just talking about it? Throughout history, women have been stigmatized, ostracized, and so much worse for committing adultery—while men have too often been given a pass. But the truth is that women have the same wants, needs and desires as men despite cultural assumptions. Hosted by journalist Jo Piazza, this groundbreaking podcast series features real women of different ages and backgrounds telling the stories of their affairs, many for the...

We're closing out the Committed podcast with an intimate look back at our favorite episodes. Join host Jo Piazza and producer Ramsey Yount as we recount the shows that made us laugh, the ones that made us cry and the one that has helped save Jo's own relationship. This has been an incredible journey with all of you. Thanks for listening. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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...

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...

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...