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RELATED LINKS

• Ms. McCoo's & Mr. Davis' official site
• Q & A with Ms. McCoo & Mr. Davis
• Article on Ms. McCoo & Mr. Davis
• About Up, Up, and Away

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Tavis: I am pleased to welcome Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. to the program. The talented singing duo were founding members, as you know, of the seminal sixties group The Fifth Dimension. Now, when I was a kid, you couldn't turn on a radioo-let me be clear about this, A.M. radio--without hearing one of their classic songs. The latest project from the two is a new book called--it's about time, too--"Up, Up, and Away--How We Found Love, Faith, and Lasting Marriage in the Entertainment World," and, no, that's not an oxymoron. First, though, a trip down memory lane. Take a look.

The Fifth Dimension singing: I'm gonna marry that Bill,

I got the wedding bell blues,

Please marry me, Bill,

I got the wedding bell blues,

The wedding bell blues,

Hey, yeah, I got the wedding bell blues...

Tavis: Now, the good news is, they're still together, but the better news is, Marilyn McCoo still has a 6-pack, so that...

Tavis: After all these years. You look good, Marilyn McCoo.

Marilyn McCoo: Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: Nice to see you. Billy Davis Jr., how are you, sir?

Billy Davis Jr.: I am doing fine, Tavis.

Tavis: Nice to see you both. First of all, congratulations.

Billy: Thank you.

Tavis: I don't know anybody that knows the two of you--and for that matter, that doesn't know the two of you--who knows anything about your story who's been asking for 35 years, for as long as you guys have been married, where is the book? I mean, you guys have done this so well for so long. Why did it take you 35 years? Obviously, it didn't take you 35 years to get it right.

Billy: Uh-huh. Right.

Tavis: But why 35 years to write the book?

Billy: Well, actually, you know, we renewed our vows on our 25th anniversary, and after that, a lot of people were saying, "Hey, you know, you guys should write a book." And we said, "Well, we don't have anything to talk about."

[All laugh]

Billy: We did. We really believed that. And what happened was, we saw some books out there where people had been together for 5 years and were writing a book, and we said, "If they can write a book after 5 years, I think we do have something to say."

Tavis: Yeah.

Marilyn: Our manager Jason Winters said, "You guys have a story to tell." Why don't you tell them about this, about that? And it's like, "Oh, yeah. OK, we can talk about that." So, that's the way it started.

Tavis: What did you most enjoy--I was just making this point a moment ago when we showed this video about this trip back down memory lane-- what did you enjoy most about going back down memory lane to put a book like this together?

Marilyn: Just--go on, baby.

Billy: Well, I didn't enjoy too much of it, because I was a bad actor, you know? So I didn't enjoy a lot, but it brought back a lot of memories and a lot of stuff that I did in my life that I...sometimes now I look at it, and I wish I hadn't done it, but, you know, hey, you know, I'm on the other side of it. It is what it is.

Tavis: Right.

Marilyn: You know, as we started putting the book together, we'd have to say, well, are we going to talk about this? Well, can we share that? And we realized that our reason for putting the book together is because we wanted to encourage people in their marriages, to let them know that, you know, every marriage has its challenges, has its troubles, and to let them know that if we can come through it and enjoy ourselves after 35 years, that they can, too. And we just wanted to tell them what we had been through, and we wanted to be honest about it, because, you know, people are not dumb. They know if you're telling the truth or if you're hedging. And if you're hedging, then you can't help people.

Billy: That's right.

Tavis: Speaking of telling the truth, I love the two of you because you are truth tellers. Let me just put you on the spot here, respectively, and ask you...

Marilyn: Uh-oh.

Tavis: Yeah.

Billy: I knew it.

Tavis: You knew it, didn't you?

Billy: Yes.

Tavis: And you still came on the show. You ain't got no sense, Billy Davis Jr.

Billy: I know it, I know it, I know it.

Tavis: Let me ask whenobecause every marriage to your partner, Marilyn, has difficulty.

Marilyn: Mm-hmm.

Tavis: Tell me about a dark time in your relationship. Without getting too personal, when you thought that the pressures of the business or the pressures of life or just the pressure of being with somebody as much as you guys spend time together might break this thing up or certainly challenge the marriage.

Marilyn: Well, Billy has--had a drinking problem, which he talks about in the book. And a time came in our marriage-- I always believed that, you know, some people will threaten. Well, if you don't do this, I'm leaving you tomorrow. Well, if you don't do this, I'm out of here. I never would do that, because I felt like it loses its power if you threaten with that, and you don't mean it. But the time came in our relationship where I began to think that maybe this is not going to last, because of the drinking and because it seemed like he wasn't going to stop. And I had tried for years to get him to stop. He had tried to stop, but he hadn't succeeded. And it just seemed like he didn't want to stop. And I told him one day. I said, "I don't know how much longer I can put up with this."

Tavis: So, what do you say to the women now who--before we came on the air, as you recall, I just went around the studio right here and started asking persons on my set here who'd been married the longest. We got up to 15 years--one of the camera guys. One of my assistants over here had been married just 2 years. Somebody said one year, and one of my other camera guys said a year. So, what do you say to these persons here who in days to come may have difficulty in their own relationships and think about getting out of it and don't even have somebody who has a drinking problem. It could be much simpler than that, but they feel like they might need to get out of this.

Marilyn: Well, you know, for me, I not only love Billy, I like Billy. He's my friend as well as my husband. And I think that that's one of the things that kept our marriage so strong together and kept me hanging in there, because I felt like, I don't know how I'm going to live without Billy in my life, because he's been such an important part of it. I would say to hang in there, to stick with it. When you think that you've tolerated as much as you can, try to go a little further...and pray. You've got to pray about it, because I believe that prayer really helps.

Tavis: What's the value though, Billy, of doing what Marilyn just suggested? I mean, in the world that we live now, it's so easy to get out of marriages.

Billy: That's right.

Tavis: Why stay there? Why stay there, in the minds of some, who keep beating your head against a wall? You know, Marilyn says do all you can. When you think you've done all you can, tolerate some more. Why should I do that? What's in that for me?

Billy: Well, actually, you know, a lot of times when you're doing--in situations like that, they can be growing pains. As far as--you're in the relationship, and you're trying to change each other. And if you get out of that relationship and get into another one, you starting all over again. You're going to go through the same things with the next person.

Tavis: You might be better off where you are.

Billy: Exactly right, but you don't know that now. You don't know that then, you know? And then another thing-- you know, in these relationships, you don't have to win all the battles. Sometimes the battles are not meant to win. You know, let them go. A lot of times when you really look at it, it's really nothing anyway. It's just something that your ego got in the middle of or something like that, and that's damaging. It's damaging to the relationship.

Tavis: When you walked in here, I said, "Billy, how you doing?" and you were telling me that you're doing well. And then I said, "How's the marriage after 35 years?" And you said to me, "It gets better every day."

Billy: That's right.

Tavis: You meant that.

Billy: Exactly.

Tavis: How could it get better every day, but after 35 years?

Billy: Well, first of all, you know, we went through a lot of challenges together. And we like each other, like Marilyn said. We in love with each other, and we friends. We best friends. And that's a good combination. We don't want to be apart. And when you look back at all the stuff you've been through, and you can still hang on to each other, it gets better and better. You don't want to be apart.

Marilyn: You know, I notice, Tavis, with many people, many friends of ours who have been married and divorced, and then people, like, our age who turn around and marry--I'm talking about men now--marry a little young cute thing, 25, 30 years of age, and then he starts talking about Frank Sinatra, and he did this, and he did that. She says, "Who?"

Tavis: Yeah. "The Fifth Dimension? Who was that?"

Billy: Yeah, right.

Marilyn: Please. We didn't want to use that.

Tavis: Yeah.

Marilyn: But, you know, what happens is that, you know, this young life starts making the old husband feel old.

Billy: That's right.

Marilyn: And when you're with the person that you've shared so many experiences with, you have so many wonderful memories together. You relate on a whole different level about life and about the things that have happened. You can talk about where you were when Kennedy was assassinated. And for young people, that's just a story in the history book.

Tavis: How do you make a marriage work in this business after all these years? It's one thing to look at the high divorce rate in our society today--and that's a problem that we all as Americans have to do something about or certainly deal with in some sort of way in terms of keeping the family together--but you all are in the business that seems tooand maybe it's just that we read more about it, I don't know--maybe we're intrigued by it more than other marriages. I don't know. But certainly this is a business that seems to be an impossible task to make a marriage work in, yet you've done it for 35 years.

Marilyn: Believe it or not, there are a number of marriages out there in the entertainment business that have done well. There's Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis and--

Billy: And Ashford and Simpson.

Marilyn: That's right.

Tavis: James Garner, which we had on not long ago. James Garner the actor.

Billy: Yes, right, yeah.

Marilyn: You know, if you sit down and think about it, those are the people you don't hear about, because they're not sexy. It's not hot news, you know? But I think it has to do with just caring about each other and being committed to each other. I think that there are just as many divorces in other areas of business, but because we are more in the limelight, than people--

Tavis: It's magnified more.

Marilyn: Yeah, exactly.

Billy: Not only that--a lot of times the people in our industry, you know, right away, in this business, you separated most of the time. Especially if the wife's in the business and the husband's in the business. But one of the things--in the back of their mind--they want to be married, but in the back of their mind, they're saying, "well, if it doesn't work..." they've set themselves up already for it not to work, you know? "I can get out of it." You know, and it's really not--marriage is more than just a piece of paper. When you marry, it's a covenant. You know, so that means that you go through sickness and health. I mean, you're supposed to stay together.

Tavis: Let me--I could talk for hours, and they don't give me that kind of time, unfortunately. I want to end our conversation where we began with that clip that we played at the top. When you guys see clips like that nowadays, what do you think when you see that stuff?

Marilyn: I was looking at what a clown Billy was in that.

Billy: Hey, wait, listen. I haven't changed.

Tavis: Yeah.

Billy: You don't want me to change, do you?

Marilyn: Aw, no. We're so young there. It was a lot of fun. It's a wonderful thing to have your life recorded on videotape, so that you can go back and see it. And we're so thankful for the oldies radio stations now, which keep our music alive and well.

Tavis: You're still singing, now. You haven't stopped singing.

Marilyn: Have not stopped.

Tavis: You're still touring and doing all--yeah.

Marilyn: As a matter of fact, in our book we have--

Tavis: There's a CD in here.

Marilyn: We have a giveaway CD.

Billy: That's right, that's right.

Marilyn: A couple of love songs there.

Tavis: Yeah. I like this. "I Believe In You and Me" and "Because You Love Me." So there is a companion CD with this book. Marilyn knows how to do this. Thank you for reminding me of that, Marilyn. Didn't want to miss an opportunity to plug the CD in the new book "Up, Up, and Away--How We Found Love, Faith, and Lasting Marriage in the Entertainment World," written by 2 legends in their own time, Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. Nice to see you both.

Marilyn and Billy: Thank you.

Tavis: Congratulations on the book and 35 years--and 35 more.

Marilyn: Thank you so much, Tavis.

Billy: We're working on it.

Tavis: All right. That's our show for tonight. As always, you can catch me on the radio on NPR. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, thanks for watching. Good night in Los Angeles, and as always, keep the faith.