Should We Do This?

Summary

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Family Secrets Podcast – Episode Summary

Podcast: Family Secrets
Episode: Should We Do This?
Host: Dani Shapiro
Main Guest: Marion Winick
Original Air Date: January 15, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this moving episode, Dani Shapiro hosts writer and NPR commentator Marion Winick to explore the complexities of hidden truths within families. Marion revisits her extraordinary marriage to Tony, a gay man living with HIV/AIDS during the height of the epidemic, and her journey from secrecy to revelation. Through candid storytelling, Marion examines how the secrets we keep from ourselves—and each other—shape our relationships and ultimately, our healing.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Reconstructing Memory and Truth (02:42–03:47)

• Marion speaks about the challenge of reconstructing the past, acknowledging how memory gets revised and how elusive the “truth” can be.

  • “It is a vertiginous feeling trying to reconstruct the past, realizing how much my memories have been revised to fit my later understandings...” (Marion Winick, 02:42)

• She expresses a wish to communicate with Tony, underscoring the unfinished nature of secrets and understanding.

Wild Teenage Years and Early Writing (04:39–07:12)

• Marion details her wild adolescence on the Jersey Shore and early academic success.
• She shares her precocious beginning as a writer, including poems protesting the Vietnam War under a pen name.

  • “I started writing when I was 8. I had a pen name, Tracy Beth Richardson… writing poems about the Vietnam War and emotional drama.” (Marion Winick, 06:23)

• The pen name reflected a desire for reinvention and belonging.

Meeting Tony – The Love Story Begins (09:19–13:51)

• Marion recounts meeting Tony, an openly gay ice skater, during a tumultuous Mardi Gras trip.
• Their connection was instantaneous, unexpected, and defied conventional boundaries.

  • “I knew many good things about Tony the gay ice skater. And one thing I definitely knew is that he was a gay ice skater...I really became instantly attached, enamored.” (Marion Winick, 09:19)

• Despite knowing Tony was gay, their relationship evolved quickly into a romantic partnership.
  • Their intimacy was unconventional: “We did sometimes have sex...it wasn’t a total disaster. I mean, we had two sons.” (Marion Winick, 13:12)

Building a Life—Marriage, Austin, and Career (13:56–16:20)

• The couple marries in 1986 in New Jersey and relocates to Austin to start fresh, away from Tony’s past relationships.
• They face unexpected challenges, yet each finds their own path: Marion in tech writing during Austin’s tech boom, Tony as a successful hairdresser.

Living with HIV/AIDS – Risks, Secrets, and Parenthood (16:20–21:13)

• Both were tested for HIV before marriage and starting a family. Marion remarkably did not contract the virus, enabling them to have two healthy sons.
• The couple maintained a careful private/public line about Tony’s illness and sexuality, largely to protect family, privacy, and livelihood amid 1980s/90s stigma.

  • “It was not something that I would consider publicizing...I had a pretty good sense of Tony's agency and privacy.” (Marion Winick, 21:13)

Parenting Amid Challenges (20:00–21:13)

• Tony flourished as a father, embracing parenthood with dedication and joy.

  • “He was such a natural. He spent all his time with the boys...He just was born to be a daddy.” (Marion Winick, 20:03)

• Marion describes her own more reserved approach to parenting during early years.

Secrecy, Illness, and Assisted Death (25:52–29:41)

• Tony’s health declined rapidly once diagnosed with AIDS. Addiction worsened as the disease advanced.
• At the end of his life, Tony asked Marion for help with assisted suicide—a wish she ultimately fulfilled despite legal and ethical obstacles.

  • “He wanted...to do an assisted suicide with me helping him. It was very hard to arrange...but we were able to arrange it another way. He got out of hospice. We went to the Four Seasons Hotel for lunch. He came home, he died in his bed.” (Marion Winick, 27:42)

Breaking the Silence – Public Storytelling (29:15–31:11)

• Marion decided to share the true story of Tony’s death on NPR, risking legal and public fallout.
• The widespread response to her frankness inspired her to write First Comes Love, contributing to a new wave of radically honest memoirs.

Memoir and the “Assertion of Truth” (32:20–33:04)

• Initially intending her story as fiction, Marion’s publisher insisted on nonfiction: the truth was so improbable it required authenticity.

  • “It had to have the assertion of truth...Otherwise it would just be: how does this woman think we're going to read this ridiculous novel?” (Marion Winick, 32:20)

Oprah, Double Exposure, and the “Unthought Known” (34:00–37:51)

• When preparing for an Oprah appearance, Marion learns Tony had a longtime affair she was unaware of—an exposure that deeply unsettled her.

  • “He said, ‘but Marion, you knew?’ And I was like, ‘No, I didn’t know. I never knew.’” (Marion Winick, 34:00)

• Dani introduces the psychoanalytic idea of the “unthought known”—things sensed but not consciously acknowledged.
• Marion recognizes in hindsight that her narrative may have unconsciously signaled more than she let herself believe.

Retrospective Wisdom – Editing Her Own Story (37:51–42:45)

• Reading her memoir for a new audiobook, Marion realizes and acknowledges moments she “got wrong.”

  • “Reading the book...was like an amazing opportunity for 67 year old me to visit with 26 year old me...I used to think I should be mad at Tony...But now I think Tony was making our life work the only way he could figure out to do it.” (Marion Winick, 38:25)

• She expresses real gratitude for their years together, acknowledging her own role in shaping (and constraining) the relationship.

  • “Thank you, Tony. Thank you for making it work as long as you did. I didn't make any space for Tony to be who he really was...If Tony had not died, what would have happened is that we would have split up and been best friends, and co-parented these kids together.” (Marion Winick, 41:24)

Closing: Remembrance and Legacy (42:55–43:50)

• Marion reads from her new introduction, lovingly honoring Tony’s memory, their sons, and the bittersweet legacy of a lost generation.

  • “Dear, dear beautiful Tony, it is my pleasure to introduce him to you as I write this. His sons...are 37 and 35, and he has two grandchildren...It is terrible to think of what we lost when this generation was decimated, but it is also very sweet to bring back the long-lost world of the 1980s...” (Marion Winick, 42:55)

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On the complexity of memories and truth:
  “If there is a truth at all in this world of overlapping subjectivities, it sometimes seems too complicated to hold in my head.” (Marion Winick, 02:42)
• On unconventional love:
  “I knew many good things about Tony the gay ice skater...I really became instantly attached, enamored. People, you know, say, well, didn’t I know he was gay? Yes, I certainly knew...” (Marion Winick, 09:19)
• On the fusion of risk, parenting, and secrets:
  “We knew he was HIV positive when we got married and we knew that I wasn’t...I pretty much have injected it into my veins and I don’t have [it].” (Marion Winick, 16:36)
• On narration and self-discovery:
  “I used to think that I should be mad at Tony about this...But now I think Tony was making our life work the only way he could figure out to do it.” (Marion Winick, 38:25)
• On gratitude and healing:
  “Thank you, Tony. Thank you for making it work as long as you did...If Tony had not died, what would have happened is that we would have split up and been best friends...” (Marion Winick, 41:24)
• A tribute to love, loss, and legacy:
  “Dear, dear beautiful Tony, it is my pleasure to introduce him to you as I write this...It is terrible to think of what we lost when this generation was decimated, but it is also very sweet to bring back the long-lost world of the 1980s...” (Marion Winick, 42:55)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:42] Marion on memory and reconstructing the past
• [04:39] Early family life and wild adolescence
• [09:19] Meeting Tony and beginning of their relationship
• [13:56] Marriage and move to Austin
• [16:36] Living with HIV/AIDS, secrecy and facing parenthood
• [20:03] Marion and Tony’s parenting dynamic
• [25:52] Tony’s illness, addiction, and assisted death
• [29:41] Marion’s public storytelling and inspiration to write
• [32:20] On memoir as “assertion of truth”
• [34:00] Oprah, exposure, and discovering Tony’s secret affair
• [38:25] Reflecting, editing, and healing—“thank you, Tony”
• [42:55] Reading from the new introduction—honoring Tony and their lost era

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Summary & Takeaways

This episode of Family Secrets is a profound reflection on the messiness of love, the shifting sands of memory, and the possibility of healing through truth. Marion Winick’s story—told in her frank, poignant, and often humorous voice—illustrates how the secrets we carry shape us, how letting go can liberate us, and how telling the whole story (even when it changes) is itself an act of love.

Listeners walk away with a sense of compassion for the ambiguities of family life, and a deep appreciation for the courage it takes to revise long-held narratives—not just for oneself, but for the next generation.

Transcript

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[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

Carmax Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. This episode contains discussion of suicide. Listener discretion is advised. It is a vertiginous feeling trying to reconstruct the past, realizing how much my memories have been revised to fit my later understandings of and rationalizations for what happened. If something doesn't fit the story, it just gets left out until it sneaks back. One day suddenly appears amid the other memories and the simple narrative line is wrecked. The neat explanation no longer works. If there is a truth at all in this world of overlapping subjectivities, it sometimes seems too complicated to hold in my head. I wish so much sometimes he could come back and tell me everything, fill in all the blank, exactly what happened and when and why. I think maybe we could be straight with each other now. I know he would want me to get this right.

[Dani Shapiro (Host of Family Secrets)]

That's Marian Winick, journalist, author, book critic, and frequent commentator on NPR's All Things Considered. Her memoir, First Comes Love, was first published 30 years ago and is just out in a new anniversary edition. Marian's is a story of love, loss and the secrets our hearts silently instruct us to bury and the way those secrets tend to, to nonetheless reveal themselves in the fullness of time. I'm Dani Shapiro, and this is Family Secrets. The secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

I was born in Manhattan, and when I was 2 and my sister was about to be born, we moved to the Jersey Shore, which was my father's hometown. And it was a wonderful place to grow up, right by the beach with lots of employment opportunities on the boardwalk for my teen years.

[Interviewer]

What were your teen years like?

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

I was wild. My sister was too. My poor parents. I often reflect on what how unbelievably bad and crazy and wild we were. And I mean, it literally seemed like my entire teen years was devoted to figuring out the worst things I could possibly do and doing them just in terms of really awful boyfriends, you know, who would steal my guitar and then get busted and have to be bailed out of jail. And it, I don't know what the hell was wrong with me, but it was like I had, I had the bad boy attraction in a very serious way in my teens. That lessened somewhat when I went to Brown University for college. I was young, just 17. There weren't as many truly delinquent people to fall in love with. But I still managed to have a very obsessive and focused romantic attachments. That was kind of a theme for me.

[Interviewer]

So you were excelling academically even as you were blowing things up?

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

Yes. It's rumored that I learned to read before I was three. I skipped grades when I was young. That's why I graduated from college so young. And yes, I was a combination smarty pants and mental case.

[Interviewer]

So did you know when you were at Brown or even earlier that you wanted to be a writer?

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

Yeah, I started writing when I was 8. I had a pen name, Tracy Beth Richardson. I still have the works of Tracy Beth Richardson that my father had his secretary type up. And I wrote these rhyming poems that were against the Vietnam War and all kinds of, you know, emotional drama. And Tracy Beth Richardson lasted for, you know, probably till I was almost 10 years old. And then I continued with poetry. And my first two books in my early 20s were poetry. So I was the poet. And I was very much poet personality, too.

[Interviewer]

Why the pen name?

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

I just didn't think Marion Winnick was going to make it. You know, clearly I might have wanted to be a WASP, since Tracy Beth Richardson is so WASPy.

[Dani Shapiro (Host of Family Secrets)]

After college, Marian imagines a life abroad. She travels to Berlin with a plan to attend film school. But the plan soon dismantles when she doesn't get accepted and becomes incredibly homesick. After just three months, she returns to the US Longing for the familiarity of home, as she says she's dying to see the New Jersey Turnpike. Back in the States, Marian's life begins to orbit Austin, Texas, a city she discovers almost by accident after visiting a college friend over spring break. Austin in the late 1970s is small, scrappy and magnetic. Cowboys and hippies, music, Mexican food and possibility. Marian falls in love with the city and builds a life there, bringing her sister and close friends along for the ride. For nearly two decades. Austin becomes her center of gravity, even as she briefly leaves to attend graduate school in New York in the early 1980s. In New York, Marian enrolls in the MFA program at Brooklyn College. She begins in poetry, but switches to fiction, where her deeply autobiographical stories are met with encouragement, an early step toward the personal essays she will eventually write. At the same time, she works for the Stanley Kaplan test Prep company, surrounded by other Ivy League graduates, spending her days writing exam questions and even sitting for tests herself. It's there that she falls deeply in love with a co worker. It's an intense destabilizing relationship that ends painfully, compounded by her escalating drug use and chaotic lifestyle. By 1983, the heartbreak is fresh and consuming. A close friend Sandy decides what Marian needs is escape. Something loud, reckless, and communal. She insists they go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, hoping the city's excess and celebration might offer relief. She also tells her about a young man who will be there, a man named Tony.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

It was a bit counterintuitive, since part of what was ailing me is that I was getting high and drinking all the time, but they just wanted to get me out of New York City. And then my sister and her boyfriend also came. A whole bunch of us went in a car to Mardi Gras in March of 1983. This best friend of mine, Sandy, went to Lake Placid School of Art. Well, this is while I was at Brown. And, you know, Tony was a figure skater, and he was in training in Lake Placid. So Sandy met another artist named Shelley, and Shelly was friends with Tony. So these people that we were going down to visit were this. This whole group. Shelly, her boyfriend, and Tony. And Sandy had told me about Tony many times. Tony, the gay ice skater, he's so handsome. He's so funny. He's so cool. So I knew many, many good things about Tony the gay ice skater. And one thing I definitely knew is that he was a gay ice skater. He entered the door when the carload of us from New York pulled up in front of the house, and it was up in the Garden District. And I took one look at him, and I really, you know, it was like, I just. Something happened. I really became instantly attached, enamored. I don't know. And I. People, you know, say, well, didn't I know he was gay? Yes, I certainly knew he was gay. But that kind of made it easier for me to act the way I did. I was very flirty. I sat in his lap within moments of our arrival, and I was just head over heels or something. I don't know. And then they said, somebody has to go to the grocery store. So Tony and I got to do this errand together, and he drove me down to the levee so I could see it. And, you know, we're like, in the car playing disco music and smoking cigarettes. And I just knew, like, okay, this is it. My whole life is changing right now.

[Interviewer]

So how long were you there that trip and sort of, what was the feeling that you had of. Of what was happening between you?

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

We were there for about a week. Tony was working At a gay bar in the French Quarter. And I would basically sit there in the gay bar the whole time he was working. At this point I was saying things like, I must be a gay man in a woman's body. I'm going to get a sex change so I could be Tony's boyfriend. Things were so different then. There was no gender fluidity. But he started falling in love with me too. And I. It was obvious. And so my concept of the situation changed. So I went back to New York and then we started like having this long distance phone call relationship. And it just was clear that he was getting just as obsessed with me as I was with him.

[Interviewer]

There was this great detail, right, where one of your friends tells you that he has your photo and he's like carrying it around with him and propping

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

it up wherever he goes, right? Like when they go to a restaurant, he'd prop me up on the napkin dispenser and order me something. So yeah, and we were on the phone. This is when there actually was long distance charges too. We were up the phone for hours. He came to New York and helped me move back there. I ended up finishing my master's degree by mail. We lived in New Orleans.

[Interviewer]

So at this point, you and Tony are a couple.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

Right. And you describe it as. Or at several points you describe it as. You knew that he was gay and you knew that you were straight, but you were together. It wasn't a question of whether he wasn't gay or not. And he didn't identify as bisexual.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

That's true. But we did sometimes have sex. It was never a big part of our relationship. In the early times. I was, you know, really, really focused on it and very hoping to make it happen. Frequently we tried. And it wasn't a total disaster. I mean, we have two, you know, we had two sons. And it just wasn't that. I don't think that his love for me, I do think it was romantic, but I think it probably never was physical in the way or erotic in the way that we usually are with our romantic partner.

[Interviewer]

And you marry. Tell me about getting married.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

That was 1986. We went to New Jersey and got married at my parents golf club. And it was performed by a mayor. So it wasn't like traditional in a religious sense. But I had a big veil on and a puffy dress and he had a gorgeous suit. And the general outlines of it were just like a wedding. Lots of our friends were there, our crazy friends. So much wild, colorful hair at this wedding. It was Insane. And then the other half of the people were my parents, friends from the golf club and they were like, you know, just pie eyed at this whole situation. It was pretty funny. After the wedding, we moved to Austin and we, we could not live in the French Quarter anymore because everyone in the whole French Quarter seemed to be Tony's ex boyfriend. It was, I was, you know, it was this really intense gay community and neighborhood and it was really not going to work out for people. Not everyone could have any understanding of what I was doing there and what was going on with us. And a lot of people didn't like it, you know. And so at this time it's like everything in our life was so up for grabs. Like, should I go to law school, should we do this, should I go back? And Tony had lived in Austin before and I had my long term love of Austin. So that was something we could agree on. The idea was that he was going to. A friend of his had offered him a job at the skating rink teaching. And when we got there and this guy perceived that Tony was with me, he evaporated and you know, didn't return Tony's clause. This whole job offer disappeared because the guy was so freaked out that Tony had a girlfriend. And so the idea that he was going to teach figure skating and support me while I wrote the great American novel or whatever did not pan out. So I got a job at a software company where I ended up working for 10 years. I wrote all the software manuals and I wrote all the marketing stuff. And it was this time of the tech boom in Austin. So this was a good choice for me. And then Tony hairdresser turned out to be a great choice. He was really a great hairdresser.

[Interviewer]

By 1990 you have two sons and you're living in Austin and Tony's doing well as a hairdresser and you're working for the software company. There's also this specter out there of aids.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

We knew he was HIV positive when we got married and we knew that I wasn't. And we had had so much contact of unsafe kinds that I felt, okay, well if I don't have it, I'm not going to get it. You know, I pretty much have injected it into my veins and I don't have. And I didn't, you know, zero convert as they say. So you know, I thought I would never get it. I thought there would certainly be a cure pretty soon because Tony, even though we knew we had it in 1985, it was really pretty healthy until the you know, for another six, seven years.

[Interviewer]

So this speaks to also the whole idea of, like, the secrets that we keep from ourselves. Like, when he got tested, not every person who had been, you know, knowingly exposed, you know, whether through drugs or through. Or through sex, went and got tested. A lot of people buried their head in the sand.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

What.

[Interviewer]

What made Tony and you get tested

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

in 1985, we're planning to get married and have children. So we couldn't really stick our heads in the sand. We had to find out what the situation was. And, you know, a lot of people don't know that our children could only have become HIV positive. If I had become HIV positive, it's transmitted from the blood of the mother. So as long as I didn't suddenly get it, the time that we conceived, they would not get it. You know, among the many things I was so confident about, that was one of them where I was right, at least, you know, so, yeah, but we had to know. And, you know, the treatments were so slow and incoming, and the ones there were so many that did, didn't do much at all, but we were macrobiotic and did all kinds of new age health things and, you know, tried everything that you could think of for years, in addition to AZT and whatever drugs they started having.

[Interviewer]

And so there was a shift in those years when it's so interesting and poignant. On the one hand, the hard partying and the. All of the wildness and all of the dangers and all of the risks, and the two of you in falling in love, know that you want to do this very traditional thing, which is get married and have a family. So did that change for you in those years when you were starting to, like, focus on that?

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

Of course. I mean, I had always thought, well, when I get ready to be a mom, I'll just quit all this. And a lot of people would think, well, it won't be that easy, especially since heroin was one of the drugs I was involved with. But that's exactly what happened. So the minute we started trying to get pregnant, I literally, I just quit everything. And I mean, not just drugs and alcohol, but caffeine and cigarettes, which I had, you know, been smoking for years, and I wouldn't eat food additives. And so I just did it all, like, instantly, because the importance to me of becoming a mom was everything. Tony supportively, you know, stopped doing a lot of things, too, though it wasn't as firm a decision for him. And he ended up kind of getting sucked back into a lot of partying.

[Interviewer]

Describe Tony as a dad, he was

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

like a wonder dad. It's so amazing because I don't think he had ever even dreamed that he would be a dad, you know, as a gay man in the 70s and 80s. And he was such a natural. He spent all his time with the boys. I have, like, don't have any patience. Don't want to make macaroni necklaces, you know, of course I loved my babies, and I loved nursing, and there's a lot of things I love, but I didn't have much patience for child care in the early years, or at least not compared to him. He just was born to, you know, be a daddy. So starting in May 1991, I was on the radio maybe two or three times a month telling stories about my life with Tony and the boys mostly, and whatever other topics caught my fancy. So listeners of All Things Considered had, you know, a little window into our life. One of them was about, I'm Jewish, Tony's Catholic. What are we going to do about the holidays? That would be one topic.

[Interviewer]

But it wasn't like, I'm straight, Tony's gay, or Tony has, hell no.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

We didn't even really say that Tony was gay at this point. It was like. It's not that he was trying to hide that he was gay, but it didn't play a big role in our life as parents. So it never would have come up. At this time. There was a lot of prejudice against people with aids, and it was not, you know, something that you would want as a hairdresser, to have everyone in town know that you're HIV positive. So we didn't talk about it, and we certainly didn't tell about it on the National Public Radio. You know, it's not that we hid it from our friends, but it was not something that I would consider publicizing or thinking part of my writing. I had a pretty good sense of Tony's, you know, agency and privacy. I'm just. This is like when I'm beginning to become a personal essayist and really explore my own boundaries of how vulnerable and honest I'm willing to be in writing. But, you know, like, for him, he. He didn't have to explore that. You know, I could give him a zone of protection. So in my first book, which preceded First Comes Love, which is. It's a collection of essays called Telling, I referred to Tony once as a sexually ambiguous ice skating bartender. And that's the closest I come to saying anything.

[Dani Shapiro (Host of Family Secrets)]

We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets,

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presents Painful Thoughts of course I see

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

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[Dani Shapiro (Host of Family Secrets)]

By 1991, Tony's health has declined. Then in 1992, it declines much more steeply. Tony is diagnosed with AIDS. Once he has the dreaded diagnosis, his drug addiction goes into overdrive because it's not going to matter. After all, he's been given a death sentence. He lives for a year and a half until he succumbs to the disease when his sons are 6 and 4.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

I know some people that are Tony's generation of AIDS patients who have made it. There's not many, but unfortunately at this point, drug addiction was taking such a toll on him and kind of eating away at his life force.

[Interviewer]

Did he just kind of surrender to his addiction once he knew that he was not gonna make it?

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

Kind of. I mean, he just, he, I think he just wrote himself a permission slip that to do anything he wanted to, you know. And once he knew he was going to die, that's kind of what happened. He, he just stopped, you know, worrying about being macrobiotic and all those things. And he was prescribed tons of opiates because of these, all these painful, horrible things that he had. So this is how it really started. He had bottles of 200 percodins and stuff. And that led, as it does, you know, to so many people, to street drugs, which he already knew about. And this drug thing really took over and in my opinion is just, it killed him just as much as AIDS did.

[Interviewer]

So in the end, Tony, he's suffering and he's in pain and he wants to end his life. And he asks you to help him.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

Well, you know, my sister's husband, our very close, dear brother in law, Steve, he died the year before Tony, so I guess 1993. And he told Tony, you know, the end is, it's just too terrible. When Steve died, He weighed like 90 pounds. He was in diapers. It was awful. And Tony was really on the way there. He was very, very, very skinny and very, very sick. And he was in a really wonderful hospice that they have in Austin called Christopher House. And what he wanted to do is come home from the Christopher House and do an assisted suicide with me helping him. It was very hard to arrange the plan because some people that were opposed to the idea of assisted suicide seemed to find out about the plan. And then our doctor who was going to give me the prescription for 60 Nembutol, he said, you know, please, you can't do this. People know about it. Don't fill the prescription. So we had to pause on the whole thing. And then about after a week or two, things kind of died down, and we were able to arrange it another way. So he did get his big dream. He got out of hospice. We went to the Four Seasons Hotel for lunch. He came home, he died in his bed.

[Dani Shapiro (Host of Family Secrets)]

Marion goes on the radio shortly after Tony's death. This is what she does, after all. She tells raw, unvarnished stories by herself in a sound booth that are then broadcast into the wider world. She wants to tell the whole of her story, the truth about Tony and what happened to him. She wants to defend his choice to ask for assisted suicide and her choice to agree.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

I wanted to talk about it on National Public Radio. I felt like I needed to explain how very justified Tony was in deciding how to make his exit rather than waiting for the, you know, bitter end. And I wrote that piece that was about explaining this. And NPR legal department said, you probably should not run this. You know, assisted suicide is a felony in the state of Texas. You could have protesters coming to your house. All kinds of things could happen. But I thought, once again, I thought, I know everything. So I thought that wouldn't happen. And Austin was a liberal city. I didn't. I was like a minor celebrity, known as a mom of little kids and everything. I just didn't see it. I didn't think they would come get me, and they didn't. The Houston Chronicle ran a front page story. And part of the reason I ended up writing First Comes Love was the response to this commentary. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say I got hundreds of letters from people who heard this essay, and they were people who had been following our life story for, you know, since 91. So for three years. And the amount of support and love that I got in from these letters is kind of was part of where I got my belief that I should publish the book.

[Interviewer]

And I want to make sure that I make the point that in the mid-1990s, memoirs were not. It was very early. I mean, it Wasn't early in terms of the form of memoir, which has been around since St. Augustine. But we weren't living in a culture where there was a lot of transparency, where people were telling their stories.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

I thought that First Comes Love would be published as a novel. Most things of that, you know, really, really personal, vulnerable type of material was published as fiction. But this was in the same period where people who were not, you know, 85 years old and Winston Churchill, you know, reflecting on their long career or something, you know, this is where we started having writers put the focus on maybe a smaller part of their life, not even their whole life, their childhood or some, you know, their marriage or whatever, and write in a self revealing, vulnerable way that had not really been seen before in nonfiction.

[Interviewer]

Right, Right. Yeah, it was. It was a pretty radical shift.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

And so Random House said. My editor said. When I said, well, it'll be fiction, right? And they said, no, it can't be published as fiction because this story has so many unbelievable elements that we need the assertion of truth. You know, like, how did this gay man stay with this straight woman? And how did I not get aids? And how did the kids not get aids? And how did this. Like, so many things happened that, you know, were hard to believe. How did I quit heroin overnight? You know, and so it had to have the assertion of truth to make it interesting. Otherwise it would just be like, you know, how does this woman think we're going to read this ridiculous novel?

[Dani Shapiro (Host of Family Secrets)]

When the book, the memoir, comes out, Marian receives an invitation no writer can really refuse. Oprah. As she prepares for the appearance, a producer calls to clarify the story they'll be telling Marian's long, devoted, monogamous relationship with her husband Tony, who is gay. But then the producer pauses and tells her something else. The producer was just on a call with a man in San Francisco, someone who insists that he and Tony were lovers for years. In that moment, the ground shifts. What Marian believed was a settled shared understanding of her marriage suddenly fractures. A private truce, a secret that was kept from her, threatens to become public television. And the story she thought she was going on, Oprah to tell, the story she told in her book, begins to unravel.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

I had given her that guy's number. I mean, they were harassing me to get help them find other examples of gay men who had relationships with straight women because they. The show wasn't really about my book. The show was about relationships between straight women and gay men. And so they needed more. They wanted to have a whole bunch of guests that were like this. You know, first of all, I was like, well, I don't know how many people like this there are. And second of all, I don't know how many of them want to go on Oprah if they don't, you know, have some product to promote. But this guy Kerry, he had a very close, very, very close woman friend. And I thought maybe that. Something like that, or maybe he would know someone else. I just, you know, I was trying to give. I gave them a few different contact, and he was one of them. So I actually told them to call Carrie Jaggers. And, yeah, Carrie Jaggers told them that he had had, you know, a sexual relationship with Tony that went on through the whole time of our marriage, you know, including the early parts and when I was pregnant and all this stuff. And I was totally shocked. And I immediately told the producer, I need to get off the phone. And I called Cary Jaggers, and he said, but, Marion, you knew? And I was like, no, I didn't know. I never knew. I mean, I don't know if he actually believed I knew or what, but he said he thought I knew the whole time. And he also tried to reassure me. He said, you know, it's not like we were lovers or something. We were just fuck buddies. So this was a big shock to me. And I was also so embarrassed because I had just published this book about my monogamous relationship with the gay man. And, I mean, you know, I was felt very bad.

[Interviewer]

There's a concept that comes up a lot on this podcast that is a psychoanalytic term that I came across when. When I was writing my memoir about my father and learning that he was not my biological father, which is the unthought known. And it's something that we know, like the sort of we know in our bones, but is too dangerous to allow ourselves to think. And I'm wondering whether you think that that was going on for you on any level, and also what it felt to you to be sort of almost doubly exposed where your book is just out, which is exposing as hell, and you're being sort of exposed to yourself in a way of like you're learning something that you really, truly did not consciously know.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

One of the things that happened early on, right around this time, I went to some campus and gave a lecture to a room full of students who had just read First Comes Love. And I told them about this happening and me finding out that, you know, suddenly getting this shocking news. And they all looked at me and said, but I thought that that was in the book, they actually were able to guess and interpret that this, that Tony was probably having other relationships just because I gave all the evidence, you know, he's out overnight, he's this, that. And they were surprised that I was so surprised because somehow in writing the book, I let them know. So I think you're very right about it being the unthought known because it's, it was just like that I must have really kind of known because how did I so eloquently to convince all my readers? But actually when I went back and read the book now, I mean, I see where I'm saying Tony must have become asexual. And you know, I try to make up all these crazy reasons why this was going on, but you know, no.

[Dani Shapiro (Host of Family Secrets)]

It's now 30 years since the publication of Marianne's memoir with an anniversary edition about to come out. There's never been an audiobook. So Marian's invited to narrate her own story. But in the three decades that have passed, the story has changed as stories do. Marian knows more now. And so as she sits in the soundproof booth, a familiar landscape for her, she finds herself wanting to clarify, to edit, to rewrite her own story in real time.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

When I was rereading the book in preparation for doing the audio, I mean, I was like underlining all the parts that were completely embarrassingly wrong. So I set that up in the introduction and then reading the book in general was like an amazing opportunity for 67 year old me to visit with 26 year old me and 30 year old me. I mean, I think you can like hear in my voice on the audio that I, you know, I'm sort of laughing at myself. I'm very bemused by myself. My reactions are very much in my voice. But then when I got to about the third or fourth occasion where I was making one of these insane assertions about Tony's asexuality and I just stopped and I asked the director, can I like say something about this? And she said, sure, go ahead. So I break the fourth wall and I say, okay, readers, remember I told you that there was parts that I underlined in my book? Well, this is, this is one of them. And I talked a little bit about how I just didn't know, but I was going to know pretty soon, but I didn't know yet. And you know, let the reader experience with me my little outrage at having let myself think this foolish thing. But you know, I used to think that I should be like mad at Tony about This like, I was hurt and betrayed and that was all my initial reactions and that I maintained for years was like hurt and betrayal. But now I think Tony was making our life work the only way he could figure out to do it. One of the Goodreads reviewers that hates the book said, this narcissist woman, she forced this man back into the closet. When I read that sentence, I thought, you know, you're not wrong, you're not wrong. I was just so, you know, convinced that we had to have this like certain pattern of our relationship. We had to fit the picture of the monogamous heterosexual couple that I didn't leave any room for what was the truth. And so I've really lately come to a big change in how I feel about this. Like, I think, thank you, Tony. Thank you for making it work as long as you did. I didn't make any space for Tony to be who he really was or at least sexually. And I think there was no way he would have made it through this 10 year long relationship without a secret life because he did not turn asexual. You know, that's not what happened. And our sex life, which always was poking along in one way or another the whole time, was not really his jam. And you know, I'm not saying we really don't know too much of what happened. We know Tony had a relationship with Carrie Jaggers on and off over the years. Were there other people? You know, I wouldn't doubt it, but I don't. It's not like I found out he had like 50 lovers or anything like that. And he probably did do his best to live up to this standard that we both sort of. I feel like we dreamed it up together at the beginning, but after a while I think I was the one waving the standard about it. It's too bad, like, but, you know, if Tony had not died, what would have happened is that we would have split up and been best friends, you know, and raised and co parented these kids together. And he would have got. They would have had probably two daddies and you know, well, three daddies if I remarried. But I think if he didn't die, he would have returned to his previously scheduled programming. I mean, when I said, thank you, Tony, I felt something, you know, I. I've really changed how I think about this. And it. I'm so glad that I did. I wish that I had seen this earlier and that I didn't feel so betrayed and humiliated and as you said, double because of the book, having all these assertions. In it, but I wish I could have gotten it while he was still alive.

[Dani Shapiro (Host of Family Secrets)]

Here's Marian reading a brief passage from her new introduction to First Comes Love.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

Dear Dear beautiful Tony, it is my pleasure to introduce him to you as I write this. His sons, Hayes and Vince, are 37 and 35, and he has two grandchildren, and perhaps someday we will take them to see his square on the AIDS quilt. It is terrible to think of what we lost when this generation was decimated, but it is also very sweet to bring back the long lost world of the 1980s with the weather girls, reigning men, the Poynter sisters jumping for their loves, Tony right before my besotted eyes, and Sylvester asking, do we want a funk? Please go right ahead.

[Dani Shapiro (Host of Family Secrets)]

Family Secrets is a production of iHeartradio. Molly Zakur is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is 1-888-SECRET-0. That's the number zero. You can also find me on Instagram annnyriter. And if you'd like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast, check out my memoir, Inheritance.

[Marian Winick (Narrator and Main Storyteller)]

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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