Shazi and Joe met while Shazi was building her company, the organic baby brand Happy Family Organics. Their storybook romance completely changed when their first child Zane was diagnosed with regressive autism. Shazi and Joe were forced to re-examine everything about their lives and their marriage to figure out how to parent Zane. But they did it; their family didn’t just survive, they thrived. Their family motto is “we win,” because they refuse to give up. Learn more about your ad-choices at ht...
Jun 03, 2020•35 min•Ep. 73
Pregnancy is difficult no matter who you are. But it can be even harder when society sees you one way, pigeonholes you, thinks they know exactly who you are. Spencer and Kelly’s journey to parenthood was a long one...and a beautiful one. Spencer identifies as a queer male. His husband Kelly also identifies queer. And even though Spencer is also transgender and had gone through a medical transition to present as a man, he was still able to carry their baby. Kelly and Spencer’s story first appeare...
May 27, 2020•39 min•Ep. 72
Nick and Hana met as Marines on active duty and got married fast. They hardly had a honeymoon or a courtship. Demanding military jobs and having young children took a toll on their relationships. But Nick was also suffering from the aftershocks of something that happened before he met Hana. He was a Marine in Fallujah, Iraq during Operation Phantom Fury and still suffered PTSD from it years later. Hana and Nick had to learn how to confront his PTSD and traumatic brain injury together in order to...
May 20, 2020•27 min•Ep. 71
It was fitting that we did today’s interview during the COVID-19 pandemic because it’s different from the shows we usually do, but it makes sense in the strange new world. Hannah and Kelty Luber aren’t married to each other….they’re twin sisters. Both of them are married to men, but they have chosen to live together on a farm outside of Portland, Oregon. On the farm they share their lives and their parenting duties. They’re twins...they’re incredibly close, but this decision wasn’t just about th...
May 13, 2020•38 min•Ep. 70
Since we're all hungry for things to listen to we wanted to drop some old episodes in your feed. Bestselling author Emma Straub's new book All Adults Here was released today and it is the perfect quarantine read about the very real messiness of family life. Way back in season one we interviewed Emma and her husband Mike about following their dreams and launching an independent book store. It's just a nice listen right now as a reminder that we can and will create beautiful things out of our drea...
May 12, 2020•31 min•Ep. 69
When Caroline Wright was told she had a brain tumor that was so fatal doctors nicknamed it The Terminator and that she only had a year left to live she started writing…She began to write for her two young boys and for her husband Garth. She filled dozens of black and white marbled composition books.. And in those notebooks she wrote them a blueprint for what their lives might look like after she was gone. Writing just became this ritual, this hopeful landscape that was distanced from the crazine...
May 06, 2020•36 min•Ep. 68
Cecilia Latorre and her partner Gerry tried to blend their two families under one roof. But their children had very different lifestyles and everyone was unhappy. We often take for granted that living together is a hallmark of commitment. That couples must cohabitate if they’re serious about their relationship. But what if cohabitating actually makes the relationship worse? Cecilia and Gerry decided to stay together by purchasing separate houses that are side by side. They have their own bedroom...
Apr 29, 2020•30 min•Ep. 67
Dr. David Fajgenbaum has been read his last rites five times. He suffers from the extremely rare and deadly Castleman disease, an orphan disease with no known cure or treatments. To buy himself more time to marry his college sweetheart Caitlin and start a family with her David embarked on a journey to find the cure and treatment for his disease on his own. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Apr 22, 2020•33 min•Ep. 66
Glennon Doyle was still married to the father of her three children when she saw Abby Wambach across a room and felt something that can only be described as love at first sight. Glennon didn’t think it would be possible to be with Abby, to be with a woman, to blow up the carefully curated life she had been taught she was supposed to have. But she did it anyway. And It wasn’t easy, because life isn’t easy or simple. But it was possible and once Glennon realized it was possible she began to live t...
Apr 15, 2020•30 min•Ep. 65
Three stories of love and commitment in the age of COVID-19. A Maine doctor moves out of his house to protect his wife, toddler and unborn child from the virus. A local cardboard factory steps up to make cardboard cutouts of the 120 guests who won’t be at a young couple’s wedding. And one couple who got married without leaving their apartment...in the Nintendo video game Animal Crossing. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for priv...
Apr 13, 2020•21 min•Ep. 64
Committed is back for season four on April 15th. We have ten new stories of love and marriage, hope and fear, failure and success and all the other messy parts of being a human in the world right now. This season on Committed we bring you a wife who tries to write her legacy for her husband and children after she’s diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor. We have the author and activist Glennon Doyle on leaving the husband of her three children for the love of her life, Abby Wambach. And we have a co...
Apr 08, 2020•2 min•Ep. 63
We’ve gotten so many voicemails from you that we had to run another episode of three minute love stories. This week we have a couple trying to work through their changing marriage as they adopt a foster baby born to an addicted mother. Another couple picked up their entire life and moved to Bali to open a restaurant...and, finally, a wedding singer who fell in love with a bridesmaid. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy ...
Mar 04, 2020•11 min•Ep. 62
Today we have an update from an episode we did back in April of last year. In Season Two we talked to Samantha and her wife Laura. The two of them originally fell in love in college. They got married quickly and had four sons. Samantha was born a man, but always felt like something else, always felt like a woman. After thirteen years of marriage Samantha transitioned. When we spoke to Laura and Samantha they were navigating their new relationship as parents, partners and wives. It was an episode...
Feb 26, 2020•49 min•Ep. 61
We have more little love stories for you...Three more stories that come from our own listeners. They’re short and sweet and all of them reminded us about the many ways we can commit to one another. In one a librarian meets a genuinely nice man online, in another moving into a camper van saves a couple’s relationship and finally two kids figure out how to make long distance work. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy infor...
Feb 19, 2020•11 min•Ep. 60
For this episode update we're going back to a show we did with Doree and Matt in season one. Their episode was called Hope is a Dangerous Thing. When we left them Doree and Matt were trying to get pregnant and it wasn’t working for them. They were on their fifth round of IVF and they were both wearing a little thin. That episode aired in August of 2018. Doree and Matt did do that fifth round of IVF and Doree got pregnant soon after we aired...She had a baby boy, Henry, in April of last year. We ...
Feb 12, 2020•41 min•Ep. 59
Some of the best love stories come in small packages. That’s why we asked you, our listeners, to send us voicemails of your own love stories. We’ll be running a few of them before Season Four starts. So here are three mini love stories to tide you over until we launch Season Four in April. We’ve got a dirty dog that led to love on a camping trip, a couple that learned to meet in the middle over the course of two decades and a middle school relationship that persevered against all odds. Learn mor...
Feb 05, 2020•9 min•Ep. 58
Marriage is full of challenges and tiny victories. Five years ago our host Jo Piazza decided to test her new marriage to her husband Nick by climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro as a couple. It was harder than either of them expected and had an ending no one saw coming. Jo talked about the trip and the climb on iHeart Radio's new podcast “A Way to Go,” from iHeart and Fathom. We’ve got a little bit of that conversation for you right now, hope you enjoy. For the full episode, please go to: https://cms.megaph...
Jan 29, 2020•12 min•Ep. 57
At the age of 26, Katherine Wolf nearly died from a brainstem stroke. She was newly married and the mother of a six month old baby boy. The doctors performed a rare and complicated 16 hour surgery and removed 60% of her cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls most motor function and many essential nerves. Katharine spent two months in a coma, When she woke up she had to relearn how to breathe, talk, eat and move her body. From then on Katherine and her husband Jay were birthed into a new...
Dec 18, 2019•31 min•Ep. 56
Buffy and Pat’s son Kevin passed away from a brain tumor when he was just nine years old. That was six years ago. The death of a child isn’t something you get through. It isn’t something that goes away. It’s something you live and grow with every day. And that’s...what Buffy and Pat are doing. They've walked through fire and come out alive but forever changed. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Dec 11, 2019•41 min•Ep. 55
Every couple we know has this fantasy of quitting their corporate jobs and finding a way to make a living doing what they love. But for most people it’s just that— a fantasy. Rich and Sara Combs have turned that fantasy into a reality. They quit their big jobs in San Francisco to renovate and rent out two properties down in Joshua Tree. Now they’re working on a second property, an inn right outside of Saguaro National Park in Arizona. They’re living the dream. But is the dream as good as everyon...
Dec 04, 2019•24 min•Ep. 54
Neal had a classic mid-life crisis on his 50th birthday. He bought a Harley, got his first tattoo, had an affair with a women twenty years his junior. But there’s more to the story than that. He’d gotten caught up in a bad business deal and was sentenced to four years in a federal state prison. He and his wife Allison got divorced. Allison was left to sell their home during the housing crisis since the great depression, take care of her ailing father and get their kids off to college. But that’s...
Nov 27, 2019•26 min•Ep. 53
Last year Brad and Matt Kirouac gave up their very comfortable and secure lives in a beautiful loft in a gorgeous neighborhood in Chicago to live as nomads in an RV with the goal of visiting all of 61 the country’s national parks. Their new lifestyle challenges every single part of their relationships and they’ve been forced to dig deep to see if they really want to be in this together. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for priva...
Nov 20, 2019•33 min•Ep. 52
Military wives are taught early on how to live without their soldiers. During their two decade marriage Anna and Mike have moved 12 times for Mike’s job as a lieutenant colonel in the army, all while giving birth to and raising seven kids. Sometimes Mike is with the family but sometimes he’s deployed far away in a war zone, place where it’s difficult to talk, places where Anna is often scared for his life. The distance makes you realize what's important very quickly. This is a story of how Anna ...
Nov 13, 2019•29 min•Ep. 51
This is a story of boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl, marries girl. But then…..girl falls in love with another girl. And boy….well he stays in the picture. We hear a lot more about polyamory these days than we used to, but we don’t hear enough about how it actually works, how a family can be crafted with three loving and consensual adults. Today Alex, Paul and Jackie live together and raise a child together and they want the world to know that this is their normal. Learn more about you...
Nov 06, 2019•41 min•Ep. 50
Erica and Spencer met in an online widow support group. They’d both recently lost their spouses. Within months they were married and working to blend their eleven kids together into one family. Today’s episode is about blending families, learning to parent someone else’s children and finding ways to honor the spouse that came before you. It’s never going to be easy or perfect. It’s a journey and a beautiful one. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystu...
Oct 30, 2019•32 min•Ep. 49
After Alexei Brovarnik received a K-1 visa he had 90 days to marry his American fiance Loren. The entire engagement and lead up to their wedding was captured by the reality television show 90 Day Fiance on TLC. For better or worse they lived the beginning of their marriage under a media microscope, enduring constant criticism and judgement and watching their most intimate moments, good and bad, played back to them on the small screen and the Internet. It’s so easy to judge someone else’s marriag...
Oct 23, 2019•26 min•Ep. 48
In 2017 a doctor told Brian Wallach he might only have six months left to live. He was only 37, but he’d started having trouble grasping a pen. His hands would shake. His wife Sandra was the one who told him he had to see a doctor. That’s when he learned he had ALS. Instead of turning inwards Sandra and Brian, both former Obama staffers, are using their unique skills from working on campaigns, as lawyers and with nonprofits to try to raise $100 million for ALS research in the hopes of finding a ...
Oct 16, 2019•27 min•Ep. 47
Only 1% of the people who jump off of the Golden Gate Bridge survive. Kevin Hines was that 1%. From the moment his feet left the bridge he knew he didn’t want to die. Surviving that leap sent him into a psychiatric ward. That’s where he met his wife Margaret. She loved him for his honesty and his bravery and how he wasn’t afraid to show the parts of him that were still broken. Kevin still lives with mental illness. He still lives with suicidal inclinations. But every time those thoughts even beg...
Oct 09, 2019•36 min•Ep. 46
Committed is back for season 3! On October 9th host Jo Piazza will once again peel back the curtain on a marriage to bring you the intimate and raw stories of couples trying to make it work. This season, Jo talks with a couple reeling from a fatal diagnosis of ALS, two husbands who sold their home for a nomadic life on the open road living in an RV, a husband and wife who decided to invite another woman into their marriage, a couple who broadcast their engagement to the world on the show 90 Day ...
Oct 02, 2019•3 min•Ep. 45
On this bonus episode, Jo shares an excerpt from her novel, How to Be Married, that inspired this podcast. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Sep 11, 2019•30 min•Ep. 44
