Laura Schlessinger

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Laura Catherine Schlessinger (born January 16, 1947) is an American talk radio host and author.

"The Dr.

Laura Program," heard weekdays for three hours on Sirius XM Radio, consists mainly of her responses to callers' requests for personal advice and often features her short monologues on social and political topics.

Her website says that her show "preaches, teaches, and nags about morals, values, and ethics." She is an inductee to the National Radio Hall of Fame in Chicago.

Schlessinger used to combine her local radio career in Los Angeles with a private practice as a marriage and family counselor, but after going into national radio syndication, she concentrated her efforts on The Dr.

Laura Program heard each weekday, and on writing self-help books.

The books Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives and The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands are among her bestselling works.

A short-lived television talk show hosted by Schlessinger was launched in 2000.

In August 2010, she announced that she would end her syndicated radio show in December 2010.

Her show moved to the "Sirius XM Stars" satellite radio channel on January 3, 2011.

Schlessinger announced a "multiyear" deal to be on satellite radio.

On November 5, 2018, her radio program moved to the Sirius XM "Triumph Channel 111."

Early life

Schlessinger was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. She was raised in Brooklyn and later on Long Island. Her parents were Monroe "Monty" Schlessinger, a Jewish American civil engineer, and Yolanda (née Ceccovini) Schlessinger, a Catholic war bride from Italy. Schlessinger has said her father was charming and her mother beautiful as a young woman. She has a sister, Cindy, who is 11 years her junior. Schlessinger has described her childhood environment as unloving and unpleasant, and her family as dysfunctional. She has ascribed some of the difficulty to extended family rejection of her parents' mixed faith Jewish-Catholic marriage. Schlessinger said her father was "petty, insensitive, mean, thoughtless, demeaning, and downright unloving". She described her mother as a person with "pathological pride", who "was never grateful", who "would always find something to criticize," and who "constantly expressed disdain for men, sex, and love". She credited her father with giving her the drive to succeed.

Schlessinger attended Westbury High School and Jericho High School, where she showed an interest in science. She received a bachelor's degree from Stony Brook University. Moving to Columbia University for graduate studies, she earned a master's and PhD in physiology in 1974. Her doctoral thesis was on insulin's effects on laboratory rats. After she began dispensing personal advice on the radio, she obtained training and certification in marriage and family counseling from the University of Southern California, where she worked in the biology department, and a therapist's license from the State of California. In addition, she opened up a part-time practice as a marriage and family therapist.

Marriage and family life

Schlessinger met and married Michael F. Rudolph, a dentist, in 1972 while she was attending Columbia University. The couple had a Unitarian ceremony. Separating from Rudolph, Schlessinger moved to Encino, California in 1975, when she obtained a job in the science department at the University of Southern California. Their divorce was finalized in 1977.

In 1975, while working in the labs at USC, she met Lewis G. Bishop, a professor of neurophysiology, who was married and the father of three children. Bishop separated from his wife and began living with Schlessinger the same year. Schlessinger has vociferously proclaimed her disapproval of unwed couples "shacking up" and having children out of wedlock. According to her friend Shelly Herman, "Laura lived with Lew for about nine years before she was married to him." His divorce was final in 1979. Bishop and Schlessinger married in 1985. Herman says that Schlessinger told her she was pregnant at the time, which Herman recalls as "particularly joyful because of the happy news." Schlessinger's only child, a son named Deryk, was born in November 1985. Schlessinger's husband died November 2, 2015, after being ill for 1.5 years.

Schlessinger was estranged from her sister for years, and many thought she was an only child. She had not spoken to her mother for 18 to 20 years before her mother's death in 2002 from heart disease. Her mother's remains were found in her Beverly Hills condo about two months after she died, and lay unclaimed for some time in the Los Angeles morgue before Schlessinger had them picked up for burial. Concerning the day that she heard about her mother's death, she said: "Apparently she had no friends and none of her neighbors were close, so nobody even noticed! How sad." In 2006, Schlessinger wrote that she had been attacked in a "vulgar, inhumane manner by media types" because of the circumstances surrounding her mother's death, and that false allegations had been made that she was unfit to dispense advice based on family values. She said that she had not mourned the deaths of either of her parents because she had no emotional bond to them.

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Radio career

Schlessinger's first appearance on radio was in 1975, when she called in to a KABC show hosted by Bill Ballance. Ballance began to be featured in a weekly segment, being impressed by her quick wit and humour. Schlessinger's stint on Ballance's show resulted in her own appearances on a number of small radio stations. She appeared on KWIZ in Santa Ana, California, from 9:00 to midnight, by 1979. "While sex therapy is the show's main focus," the Los Angeles Times described her show as dealing with all kinds of emotional difficulties."

Although working weekends at KGIL in San Fernando, Schlessinger was filling in for Barbara De Angelis' noon-time, relationship-focused talk show in Los Angeles on KFI. Sally Jessy Raphael joined ABC Radio, and Maurice Tunick, the ABC Radio Networks' former vice president of talk programming, needed a reliable substitute for Raphael's evening personal-advice display. Tunick selected Schlessinger to play in for Raphael.

Schlessinger and her husband started airing a daily show on KFI, which was nationally syndicated in 1994 by Synergy, a Schlessinger and her husband's business. Synergy sold the show's rights to Jacor Communications, Inc., in 1997. Later, Jacor merged with Clear Channel Communications, LLC, and Schlessinger's Take on the Day, LLC, a company co-owned by Schlessinger, obtained the production rights. Take on the Day, which produced it, Talk Radio Network, which syndicated and sold it to radio stations, and Premiere Radio Networks, (a subsidiary of Clear Channel), which operated satellite facilities and handled advertising sales, joined it. Schlessinger's home in Santa Barbara, California, with KFWB as her flagship station as of September 9, 2009. The show was also on XM Satellite Radio, with podcasts and live streams of the show.

The Dr. Laura Show was the second-highest-rated radio show after the Rush Limbaugh Exhibition, and it was seen on more than 450 radio stations. Leslie Bennett recalled the show's popularity in 1998 while writing a column:

She was also No. 1 in 2010, her last year on terrestrial radio, in 2010. 5.

The show had an audience of more than 10 million viewers in May 2002, but had lost several million followers in the previous two years as a result of WABC and other affiliates, and was moved from day to night in cities like Seattle and Boston. These losses were attributed in large part to Schlessinger's change from giving relationship advice to teaching ethics and conservative politics. Hundreds of advertisers have been forced to cancel the radio show as well, as pressure from gay rights activists. Schlessinger's show was broadcast on about 200 radio stations in 2006. It was tied for third place as of 2009, alongside The Glenn Beck Programme and The Savage Nation.

For many years, Schlessinger used "Hot Talkin' Big Shot," a song by country and blues singer and songwriter Nikki Hornsby, as cue music for her radio show and national radio commercial advertisement for the show. Patti LaBelle also used "New Attitude" by Patti LaBelle.

Schlessinger said on August 17, 2010, during a live appearance on Larry King Live, that she had hoped to "regain her First Amendment rights" and that she would not be allowed to say what is on her mind without having to face "some special interest group" deciding that "this is a time to silence a voice of opposition." Following her on-air use of a racial epithet on August 10, several of her affiliates and major sponsors had scrapped her show (see Use of racial slurs below). "[n-word n-word] is what you hear [in rap]," she said.

Schlessinger's show migrated solely to Sirius XM Radio on January 3, 2011.

She currently has a short "Call of the Day" from her SiriusXM daily show, and it is ranked in the top 25 "Kids and Families" podcasts on iTunes.

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