‘Making Space With Hoda Kotb’: Delia Ephron

[Music] okay I'm gonna name two of the most popular movies of our lifetime and I want you to pause for a moment and just remember the joy those movies brought to you okay ready you've got mail and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants come on they're too good and both of those screenplays were co-written by my guest today she has also written dozens of books many of which are best sellers I'm talking today with Delia Ephron now her last name may sound familiar to you she's the younger sister of Laura Ephron Queen of the romantic comedy a voice for a generation of women get this she wrote When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle I happened to pick up Delia's latest book left on 10th a second chance at life and I'm wondering man why haven't we also been talking about Delia all these years here's what you should know about Delia just like her sister her writing is incredible it's so beautiful I just didn't want to put the book down but she doesn't just write to pay bills she writes to heal oh my God I'm so excited to see you you are brilliant come on they're not enough there's not enough dog ears or highlighters for this book oh my goodness thank you so much wow that's wonderful wow you're just what we the doctor ordered for this time in life oh thank you very much that's really good Wow first of all what a delight it is to see you in person I have to say um there are books that are packed with life lessons this one's overflowing it's called left on 10th a second chance at life and I want to talk about the second chance but can I just talk about the first chance first can we go back to the beginning do you mind okay whatever I'm sure Delia a lot of people um know you by they know your last name very well uh Ephron a lot of people of course know Nora Ephron I mean I know for a lot of your life you grew up and you have siblings you've got Nora as your older sister you've got two younger siblings what how would you describe yourself in the group of four oh I was the funny one oh you know we all get the little label in the family and that was my label um I'm not sure what my other sisters were labeled but that was definitely and every time I said something funny at dinner my father would shout that's a great line write it down so I mean we were all for we're all four writers and my parents were writers and they were just raising writers I mean my mother was very proud that she had a career and she was a screenwriter and uh she was I mean really Fierce about it and that's what her daughters you will go to New York and you will have a career that's all she said she never said a thing about about getting married having children nothing in fact she often said elope oh she did oh yes I mean a mother of four daughters who was not the least interested in seeing her daughter's wedding I mean that was my mother you say that she was a writer she and your father were more than just writers I mean they were writers tell me some of the work they put out well they wrote well first of all you made a lot more movies then and they were they were contract writers at 20th Century Fox and they wrote um daddy long legs with Fred Astaire they wrote No Business Like Show Business with um Marilyn Monroe they wrote the jackpot with Jimmy Stewart but they wrote continually they just had a very nice run in the 50s so with your mom uh not stressing marriage and stressing a career did you think um were you interested in in marriage or did was what she said the gold standard I got her message very loud and clear but I also saw a movie when I was about 11 called Seven Brides for Seven Brothers which is the most oh it's just it's the romantic comedy of all time I mean it really is it's all about Jane Powell she she she marries this in one afternoon she falls in love with a back Woodsman and moves to the Backwoods to make flapjacks for his six brothers and all I wanted to do was get married and make flapjacks for someone I saw that movie 16 times I learned the power of a romantic comedy very young oh wow I really did so there was a little war going on partly you know I wanted to have a career I wanted to be that child and uh and the other part of me I just wanted this other life if you were not writing is there something else when you were a young kid that you thought you wanted to do no look my sister Nora was she was like shot out of a cannon and and she was going to be a writer when she was two and we all knew it and um and so for me to be a writer well I had to not just take on my parents career I had to take on Nora's career but I I sort of look you can blow your 20s and still have a life and I did blow my 20s I just married the first man who asked me and I moved to Providence Rhode Island and I I got to be about 28 and I thought what am I doing here you know I I you have one life you know get this through your your head so at this point I had a crochet business all right I was crocheting and I went to a party in in New York and there was an editor there from Simon and Schuster and I said to him um I know you'd never be interested in this but would you like a book about crocheting and he said yes he said yes and the next thing I knew I wrote a book about crocheting and I didn't think I was writing I was sneaking up on it you know I was just writing directions for things so then I started to think you know I think I want to be a writer and I said to my husband my first husband that's a very important part of the story I said to him I think I want to be a writer and you know how important it is to speak a Dream Out Loud and he said I don't want you to be a writer and I said why and he said suppose you become famous I don't want you to become famous this is how pathetic I was I said to him I promise I won't be famous I'm actually worried I've been keeping that promise but anyway I absolutely knew I absolutely knew I had to leave him I mean if someone wants to crush your dreams with his big fat foot you just better get out that's what you did so it was a breakup heart yeah so then I you know I called my girlfriends in New York and I got on a train and I left Providence and that was it I thought I have one year I'm going to be a writer in one year I'm going to have to do something else okay and I figured out I mean I had messed up my 20s so badly that I I made a plan I I really recommend making plans if you're going to make big changes and I said in a year I have to get published in the New York Times that was your plan that's the only thing that's going to launch me now where I hate to compare you to your sister but where was your sister's career at this point oh my sister was writing this amazing column in Esquire about being a woman and she was an editor at Esquire and she gave me one of my first assignments but she was totally always my she was always a mentor I mean she just loved my work and and I was about nine months now almost a year really I was down to five hundred dollars and I was sitting at home eating chocolate pudding my way the type you cook you know so it had skin on top film yeah and I was scooping the pudding out from underneath and saving the skin for last and I thought I'm eating like a child this is how writers get ideas by the way this is ridiculous and I thought I'm going to write a piece about how children eat food and I wrote 500 words about I they were just directions I knew how to do that because I'd written these crochet books so I wrote how to eat like a child and I sold it to the New York Times oh my gosh and they ran it was very funny I ran it ran on the last page of the Sunday magazine and on Monday I was offered a book country you are kidding no and and that book was a bestseller a huge business what was your what was yours how to eat like a child in other lessons and not being a grown-up oh my God brilliant I turn on my computer I go online welcome welcome and my breath catches in my chest until I hear three little words so for people who don't realize You've Got Mail was not just written by Nora Ephron it was written by Nora and Delia Ephron just in case I'm just letting our listeners know they may or may not realize that um so you know your career you write your book your career is humming but love is still something that you're you're looking for after you've written your first book um how did you how did you meet your second husband um he was going to see a movie in the neighborhood with a good friend of mine and they got the time wrong she said let's stop in and see Delia and he walked up the stairs and was that was that you knew yeah wow I did get smarter about men you know was saying to myself you know from the beginning people begin as they mean to continue that is a rule I began to live by people begin as they mean to continue okay so if someone shows up late on your first date they are going to always be late for a date okay there it's a very good rule when you take a job when you meet a boss it's a rule for friendship it's and it turns out it's a great rule for men what'd you learn about Jerry well Jerry's a writer and I needed to be married to a writer and he was just the he was just a wonderful man and very very supportive it was just a great match how many years did you were you guys married we were married 32 and we were together 38 wow I feel like in my life everything good happened to me after 50 everything so it seemed weird to me to think that sometimes it all lumps together and also conversely sometimes the tough lessons all get jammed up at a certain time too I remember when your sister was sick I didn't know Nora was sick in fact I think we had her on the show and I remembered not knowing about that because that was an illness that she kept private right yes she did everybody makes their own choices when they get sick but if you were really famous and you're public about something like that I mean there's just you know you leave the house and someone says on the street corner you know I'm so sorry are you okay you know there's no privacy at all and uh Nora was intensely private and she wanted to run her at the way she she just did I mean I'm not someone that that can keep secrets I'm not someone who's suited to it I mean it was interesting how differently I mean just to me that you know because we were so alike in many ways you know it's hard for a lot of people I'm sure listening to imagine many of us have siblings and sisters and the idea that we're going to be holding our sister's hand how how did you navigate that that grief well the the really difficult thing was that I mean she died in 2012 and for and she was sick for the six years before and at that time they they tested me to see if I had was a match for her she had a myelogous plastic syndrome and it leads almost inevitably to a fierce leukemia so the only thing that can cure it is a bone marrow transplant also known as a stem cell transplant so they tested me but they also discovered that my bone marrow was slightly wonky so in addition to worrying about her I was writing about me in addition to that my husband had prostate cancer and it was going and he was going to die from that that had metastasized so I was dealing with a level of anxiety during those years that was absolutely I mean really I think back on it I I mean it was an astonishing amount of anxiety can can I ask just to dig in a little bit because I keep hearing from people who are going through horrible grief how did you go about a typical day like how did you get out of bed to help your sister help your husband worry about yourself go about your business how how did you find that strength I wrote um um it was the same way I got over this trauma of getting leukemia myself so um your sister passed away and it must have been like you said when you're a public person your grief is public and so is the loss did you find comfort in knowing that other people felt the loss or did you kind of wish you could have just grieved on your own you know I think I actually truthfully I think I would have rather grieved on my own I mean I I loved the love of my friends who just you know surrounded me with love and and that was just incredible but I I think you know this is just be honest I I was trying to think about Caroline Kennedy I'm thinking her whole life someone said walked up to her and said um I was driving on the on the Taconic when I heard your father died I you know your father's pictures on my breakfast table um you know whatever on the wall in my house I I remember his he was so incredible to me and she is just getting thousands of her whole life has been that and there is a lot of wanting to share and I completely understand it Nora was profoundly important for women and she was an amazing person so it was both that I loved getting and also that it it was overwhelming it was a little overwhelming yeah and then to still be in the process of of caring for your husband at that point and to watch that because that was he was three more years before he passed yes he did passed in 2015. and what did you lose the day he passed well just everything in my life change because um you know the strangest thing about living in a house that you've lived in with someone all those years it's like they're they're on the walls they're in the kitchen with you there but they're not you know they're I'm sitting on his couch watching television in his office and I'm just feeling you know a tremendous displacement and everywhere I went I felt like what am I doing here and and it's hard by the way it's very hard when someone dies because you've got you've got all the death certificates and you have to close out accounts and you have to change everything and people are not easy I mean and that's how I ended up yeah when my internet crashed well that is funny because I mean first of all the fact that you guys had two landlines at your house one in his name and one in yours and all you want why did you want to cancel his landline that was something you just wanted to get done it just seemed like a place to begin yeah you know it seemed like a place to begin and one of the things about trying to cancel this landline is that it's a rite of passage for almost everyone who loses a mate is canceling their if their cell phone if not their landline I mean that is one of the things because when I tried to do it and got into this terrible battle with my phone company and they they not only shut the landline down but they then crashed my internet and couldn't get it back um and I got so crazy that I wrote a very funny sad piece about it for the New York Times and I can't tell you how much mail I got I mean we got so much mail on that piece and it was all people who'd had battles with their phone company and in the same situation I mean it was it was really it it's a really big thing right when you're grieving and you're trying to take care of business at the same time and keep running into roadblocks you really can't go a little wild I still I went crazy I actually did a little bit well in addition to the whole truckload of mail that you got and email I'm sure you got one special email which you were how old were you at that point when you're when your husband passed 72 72 years old and all of a sudden you get an email from a from a gentleman named Peter and what this wasn't his first interaction with you no we had had two we still can't agree on how many dates we had because I don't remember it at all but I think it was two dates but it might have been three 54 years before when I was 18 years old and my sister Nora had fixed us up so I got this very very Charming email from Peter who was a psychiatrist a jungian analyst living in the Bay Area and he said you know we had we had a couple of dates but um so it's just the most was the most Charming note it was lovely and so of course I sent it to at least three girlfriends to see what they thought because at that point I wasn't leaving the house practically without calling a girlfriend to see if it was a good idea so um I wrote him back well first I Googled him of course what else you know what I love about you I mean I'm just talking to you for the first time your heart didn't get hard like it's not even it doesn't I mean I'm sure it has a film on it because every heart does after going through some knocks and bumps but yeah to be giggly and and excited and and giddy about an email um is pretty cool to to have that yeah yeah yeah I was very frightened though I mean there's a lot of guilt about surviving and losing your mate and so I had sort of considered for the first time the idea of somebody else and Peter didn't write me for five months after that he wrote me three days after the first anniversary of Jerry's death and I think that year alone is a really it's you go through all the holidays you go through um all sorts of experiences um in the first year so I think it was just also Bashir which is the word that Peter and I use but share it's a Yiddish word meaning uh destined soulmate or or something fated to be and it was very Bashar when I received it let's talk about the guilt part because that's an interesting piece and I think anyone who's ever gone out on even a single date after losing a spouse is must struggle with that how did you deal with it what did you do well I mean I remember when he finally did come come to the house which was and he flew East then about three weeks later and by that time we had completely fallen in love over email you know I remember him being in the kitchen and thinking that Jerry was there in the kitchen with us you know that I wasn't alone with Peter that he that he was there and I after being so able to talk about anything I was suddenly Shire different worried and um and we had to really in a way start again when you're 72 when death is so close you can read out reach out and touch it you know and so I got very frightened that that weekend although I was extremely attracted to him so that did mitigate it a bit and he's one most wonderful person sometimes you meet a wonderful person like Peter and you're like okay I had my Shira Knox um I've already I've lost two people I love and now it's finally time for my love my second love story to start but your your doctor gave you a blood test like she'd been doing over the course of a long time and 10 years every six months she tested my blood to see if I was okay and every every six months you'd say well this is the most boring blood I've seen today and send me off she's a wonderful doctor it was four months after Peter and I had just Fallen head over heels for each other and I went to my six-month appointment and it just it just came up leukemia it's right there it's so stunning to get a diagnosis like that and it was confirmed that it was AML uh but you know every leukemia is different under a microscope in spite of it being that my sister had AML and I had AML we had different amls basically yeah and my doctor just kept saying to me you know first of all they're new treatments I mean that it is amazing of blood cancer the the progress since 2012 when she died amazing so there were new drugs and there were new treatments and she said and you're not your sister uh under a microscope you're not your sister that's all she met but for me you know I mean I just tried to be I spent my the first years of my life just trying to do everything she did and failing miserably because she was going around the track so fast I couldn't keep up but um you know to say that to me when I'd that I could survive and she wasn't able to it was betrayal it felt like betrayal as well as empowerment you know it was both things at once it was opposites you know and I just kept saying to myself you're not your sister you know and maybe you can have a different outcome at the time your boyfriend Peter uh in the middle of all this who knows what what someone's going to do when they find out that the person that they've fallen for for four months is is very ill what did what did Peter do he'd flown in after my diagnosis and we were sitting and I'm making french toast and I'm thinking about you know I'm checking into the hospital Tuesday and my mind is very and he's sitting at the table and he says we should get married and then he kind of heard himself say it and he's he just like popped up out of the chair and said will you marry me and I said yes and because we all and Peter says he always knew we were going to get married so I said yes and then we went on uh Monday we went and got a license and we bought a ring and on Tuesday I checked into the hospital and on Thursday I had my first uh chemotherapy and on Saturday we got married we had a very few friends come to the dining room on the 14th floor and and my friend Jesse presided and we got married at the hospital yeah at the hospital do you think about how Nora might have had a play in this I mean how how many times do you guys well it's just you know I mean Peter says we were not meant to be together when we were young and that we met when we did was when we were meant to meet and I believe that's true too but there's no question I feel like she had a hand in it well she had a hand in so much of my life let's face it but she certainly this was really something when he said that Nora had fixed us up you know what she was always fixing me up by the way because she was never as beautiful as this yes right you know what I find remarkable about you I think if someone else was in your exact circumstances losing a sister and then losing a husband I can see a life going a completely different way like I just wonder because I think it's easy to retreat and say these are the cards I was dealt and you know what I already had my good times before and maybe I should just ride this out and you know do my thing why do you think you did not become that person I actually think it's because I like to laugh oh really yeah I like to have fun and I just think that didn't go away that's all I can put it to Delia Efron thank you so much for being with us on the podcast thank you so much I had so much fun oh me too thanks for the laughs do see you later okay bye-bye hey thanks for watching our YouTube channel find your favorite recipes celebrity interviews uplifting stories shop our favorite deals and so much more with the Today app download it now

Channel: TODAY

Views: 8,349

Keywords: Today, Today Show, Savannah Guthrie, Al Roker, Natalie Morales, domestic news, international news, weather, interviews, politics, money, media, entertainment, sports, breaking news, food, health, home, parents, style, concerts, pets, shopping, Hoda Kotb

Id: NV_ykigdjg8

Length: 25min 18sec (1518 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 21 2022