Nick and Vanessa Lachey, Love Songs, Dog Mountain

Hi, this is Jill Schlesinger, CBS News Business Analyst, Certified Financial Planner, and host of the Money Watch Podcast. This is the show where your money is not scary. It is a show that's all about you. It's your questions that make it possible for me to provide unconventional and entertaining insights on your money, and maybe more importantly, on your life. Follow Money Watch wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday Morning. Just a tad early, we wish you a happy Valentine's Day. Come Tuesday, three words, I love you, will be spoken, and of course, heard in song, countless times. Instead, the oldest known love song was written back in 2000.

That's 2000 BC, composed for the king in ancient Mesopotamia. Then, last year, Billboard magazine named Lionel Richie and Diana Ross's 1981 hit, Endless Love, the number one love song of all time. This morning, David Pogue looks at the endless ways to say, I love you, in song.

You are so beautiful to me. How do you write the perfect love song? What's remarkable is that somehow we haven't exhausted all the ways to say, I love you.

They keep doing it. Even after millennia of love songs. Coming up on Sunday Morning, a quest to discover the ingredients of the classic love song. Then, a match that could only have been made in Hollywood. Jonathan Vigliati catches up with Nick and Vanessa Lachey, who've spent the past few years hard at work on a hit show featuring love stories truly made for TV. You really married me? You really said yes. The rules of attraction are changing, and nowhere is that more true than on television. Grown men are proclaiming their love for this person that they've never, ever laid eyes on. So, eight weeks from hello to I do. Hello to I do. That sounds insane. It does.

I cannot do this. Nick and Vanessa Lachey on Love is Blind and Making Marriage Work, ahead on Sunday Morning. And we'll tell you about a very different affair of the heart. Martha Teichner visits a mountainside paradise for pets. Dog Mountain is to your average dog park what Everest is to an ordinary hill. It's a work of art created by an artist.

It's sacred space for dogs and the people who love them, like me. Later this Sunday morning, a day at Dog Mountain with Girly. And much more besides. We'll have an appreciation of Burt Bacharach and his song book from our Mo Rocca. Faith Salie serves up a short history of that classic confection beloved by so many, Fudge.

Rita Braver is in conversation with school shooting survivor and gun safety activist David Hogg. Plus David Martin with a look back at the long and rocky road that led to desegregation of our military. A story from Steve Hartman and more.

This Sunday morning, February 12th, 2023. And we'll be back in a moment. That was a big hit for the late Jim Croce back in 1974. Turns out that for songwriters, finding new ways to say I love you is a never-ending challenge. David Pogue tells us why we'll always love a good love song. What makes the perfect love song? I mean, is it my funny Valentine?

Sweet comic Valentine. Or is it like, I'm in love with an uptown girl, she's been living in her uptown world. Or is it, let's get it on. Let's get it on.

I mean, it's not an idle question. More people listen to music at Valentine's Day than any other time except Christmas. Over 105 million users create their own playlists every Valentine's Day. As the editorial director of the music service Spotify, Sulina Ong is in the perfect position to observe the latest trends in love songs. One of the main themes is vintage sound. So there's a real appetite for 50s and 60s music.

And the other trend that we see is what we call anti-Valentine. Ranging from, God, I can't believe I went out with that person to I'm happy being single and living my best life. Well, there are songs where you're happy because you're falling in love, and there are songs where you're sad because you've just broken up.

Sounds like that's way too limited. It is. There will be millions of songs about love. It's a complex emotion. Seventy percent of all hit songs are about relationships, about love and relationships. Nate Sloan teaches musicology at USC's Thornton School of Music. His specialty is the history of pop and jazz. And when it comes to love songs, there's a lot of history. In this Spanish song, performed by USC's Baroque Sinfonia, the singer says he's in love with three different girls. The song is 500 years old.

Very little has changed. These are very universal and sort of timeless emotions that people tap into for a love song. You might think that this Elvis hit was written in the 60s.

That actually dates back to 1784. It's a French love song called Plaisir d'amour that Elvis and his collaborators reworked into the pop standard we know today. The Plaisir d'amour guy is still getting royalties 400 years later?

So the only person catching a check is Elvis and his estate. I asked Nate Sloan to recommend some golden rules for creating the perfect love song. First, I think it's imperative that songwriters come up with a new way to say I love you in every song. Few songwriters have found more fresh ways to say I love you than Grammy winner and 14-time Oscar nominee Diane Warren. Thirty of her songs have hit the top 10. Twenty-nine of them are about love and relationships.

Who knew? Since I know nothing about them. Are you saying that you write these songs not really having experienced much of what you're writing about? Yeah, not to the extent of some of my songs. I can write, I can stay awake just to hear you breathing, but I don't want anybody to stay awake hearing me breathe. Over the years, Warren has written thousands of songs. Is there an exhaustion point of a number of ways that you can talk about- No.

I don't think there's any exhaustion point. There's only so many notes, right, and so many words, but you can mix them up a million different ways and make something great. People always fall in love and they'll always have their heart broken. And if you can say it in a cool way that no one said it before, that's always the best. Golden Rule number two has to do with how you write the music. So whatever the lyrics are saying, think about how the music can support that message. Consider this mega hit written by Dolly Parton and launched to the heavens by Whitney Houston. Okay, so how would the song be more or less successful if it was up-tempo? I will always love you.

Is that better or worse? I don't know that it would connect in the same way with an audience. The idea is that I will always love you, and that's painted musically by holding out that long I over three measures of music. It's literally the singer saying, I'm going to hold this note to show you how dedicated I am. All right, well then how about this? I will always love you.

Now it's a little menacing. It's like, I will always love you because I've trapped you in a cell. The third Golden Rule isn't about writing the song, it's about singing it. When you perform the song, you have to leave it all on the floor, because that's what we're trying to get from a love song. Trying to get someone reaching their emotional peak. It's like you're hearing that phrase for the first time. You're like, oh, now I know what love is.

So it's that simple, really. Say something fresh. I love coming up with cool ways of saying something in a different way and just trying to write the best song I can write. Make the music match. It doesn't have to be the big, slow ballad. It's such a broad experience in terms of love. And sing the heck out of it.

I will always love you, I will always love you, I will always love you. Faith Saylee has a Valentine's Day treat that couldn't be any sweeter. And this time of year, freezing temperatures are nothing unusual in northern Michigan.

But there's one kitchen that knows a recipe for keeping warm. Original Murdock's Fudge has been in operation since 1887, when it first opened its doors on Michigan's Mackinac Island. Fudge is kind of king in Michigan.

Bob Benzer is now the owner. I put a little piece of fudge sometimes in my coffee in the morning, a little piece of double chocolate fudge, you get the sugar, the cream, so yeah, cafe mocha type flavor. Fudge is Mackinac Island, synonymous with Mackinac Island.

Mackinac Island, between Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsulas, is the self-proclaimed fudge capital of America. The car-free oasis has more than a dozen fudge shops. During the summer, fudge-loving tourists, affectionately called fudgies, flood the island.

To meet the demand, each shop can make up to 500 pounds a day. But even when temperatures and tourism cool, fudge remains a hot item. Fudge seems like a natural fit for Valentine's Day.

We all love chocolates at Valentine's Day, right? So why not, why wouldn't you like fudge? That appetite for fudge dates back more than a century.

Pour into grease pans and mark off into squares. So it definitely sounds like fudge. Joyce White is a food historian.

We met her at the Maryland Center for History and Culture in Baltimore. Fudge is actually based on a recipe for chocolate caramels, which was very, very similar. What probably happened is that there was someone in Baltimore, messed it up, faged it. Fudge is a word that means you messed up.

I faged it, or I fudged it. Nowadays, we'd use a different F word to say that, right? By 1888, that Baltimore recipe was passed along to a student at Vassar College, then all women, in Poughkeepsie, New York. Women would make fudge in their dorm rooms, doing something against the rules in the late evenings and trying to get away with something not condoned in the rule book. At the same time, men at men's colleges were out carousing. It was a woman's way of being rebellious, you know, cooking in the dorm at night.

Open flame, after hours, not nutritious. Absolutely breaking the rules, right. Breaking every rule in a way that was still considered ladylike. Ladylike, right.

Yeah. Soon, so-called Vassar fudge ended up at other women's colleges, even making headlines around the country. Fast forward a century, and the recipe for fudge hasn't changed much. Sugar, milk, butter, and chocolate mixed, poured onto a marble slab, then worked until the mixture solidifies.

Here at Original Murdock's St. Ignace location, veteran fudge maker, Carnell Samuels, turns the 45-minute process into a 30-pound loaf of fudge. Down and out. Let's grab it. Scoop. All right.

Right here? There you go. Let's push. Look at that. You're a good teacher.

Human fudge is certainly harder than it looks, but if its history has taught us anything, it's that mistakes can be sweet, any way you slice it. With Martha Teichner this morning, we're heading to Vermont to visit a landmark that's sacred ground for dog lovers everywhere. Look. It's me. Early. Come on. It's so sweet. You have to sit.

Sit. Good girly. And my dog, Girly. Hey, Girly.

That's a perfect name. At Dog Mountain, having a good time on a beautiful fall day. Look at his tail, Girly. If Dog Mountain were just a joyful place where dogs can run around or plop into a nice pond, it would still be pretty special.

One hundred fifty dog-friendly acres in the scenic hills of northern Vermont. But there is much, much more to this story. It's actually a real tearjerker, sweet but sad. It began in 1994, when artist Stephen Hunek was injured falling down a flight of stairs, his injury causing him to develop a rare, often fatal lung condition. I was dead for like five minutes, not breathing. And I was in a coma for over two months, and they really pretty much wrote me off.

Hunek and his wife, Gwen, more than a decade ago, reliving the nightmare. I said to myself, well, I'm going to be positive. I'm going to believe he's going to get better.

And he did. I had to learn to walk again, and my dogs really took care of me. We would go for short walks in the woods, and they really stayed right with me. His dogs became the subjects of the now-famous woodcuts he was finally strong enough to make. His black lab, Sally, featuring in a series of best-selling children's books he wrote and illustrated. And then came his vision. I remember the moment perfectly where I had this idea popped into my mind, was build a chapel for dogs and for people.

He built it himself with this sign out front. There are carved dogs everywhere, even a dog angel on top of the steeple. There are dogs inside, some real, some not. The chapel opened in 2000 and is, more than anything, a room full of love. It's overwhelming. It makes me happy, despite crying, to come back and see, and I feel like this is a place that they're buried and that we come back and visit every year. Every inch of every wall, floor to ceiling, has been covered with layers and layers of photographs and messages people have left mourning the dogs they've lost and the occasional cat missing them. Heather Berkey drove seven and a half hours from outside Philadelphia to honor her Vishla, Lexi, who had died a few weeks before from cancer. She brought some of Lexi's ashes to spread. I love you Lexi, to have her up here and free, I don't know. Does it help?

There's no worries. How many places are there where society lets you grieve for a dog with all your heart the way you would a person? The way I have dogs in my life. Do you believe that dogs go to heaven?

I would like to think yes. Susan Oledall is an Episcopal priest whose ministry includes comforting people at Dog Mountain. Stephen Hunick has a great whimsical piece of art that's entitled A Dog Has a Soul and the dog is holding the shoelace with a shoe attached. For all the humor in his work, Stephen Hunick struggled with depression. Here's the sad part of this story. Afraid he would have to close Dog Mountain and his gallery as a result of the Great Recession, in January 2010, Hunick died by suicide.

Three years later, his wife Gwen took her own life. You have a place of joy, you have a place of love, but you also have the suicides of Stephen and Gwen. How do you square that with the wonder of the place?

I don't think they're to be squared. It's only a piece of a story and the story of what they have left behind, this gift, is where most other people and myself are greatly impacted by. The Hunick's dream lives on. One of the things that the Hunicks kind of realize is every little child that's ever fallen in love with the Sally books, when they get to come to Dog Mountain and actually meet the Sally, it's one of those things that they feel so special. Amanda McDermott is creative director of Dog Mountain, and the person who cares for the current Sally.

So this is just like a postcard. Oh, it's beautiful up here. There was something so pleasant about that place, leaving you and most of them an echo in so much space. Every time a year, Dog Mountain has a party. I'm looking for some dancers out in the crowd today. Hundreds of dogs and their people show up. This one was in October. It was a free to all, free for all.

Whoops, I'm sorry. But in spite of all the playful chaos, I managed a quiet moment to slip into the chapel and find a place to leave my message, to tell the dogs I've lost, that I love them still and hope that wherever they are, they know. Meet Jill Evans. Jill's got it all.

A big house, fast car, two kids and a great career. But Jill has a problem. When it comes to love, Jill can never seem to get things right. And then along comes Dean. I can't believe my luck.

I've hit the jackpot. It looks like they're going to live happily ever after, but on Halloween night, things get a little gruesome. This is where the shooting happened outside a building society in New Romney.

It's thought the 42 year old victim was killed after he opened fire on police. And Jill's life is changed forever. From Wondery and Novel comes Stolen Hearts, a story about a cop who falls in love with a man who is not all he seems to be.

I'm Kerry Godliman. Follow Stolen Hearts on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad free by subscribing to Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts or the Wondery app. His many hits spanned decades, from the 1950s into the 21st century. His music was heard everywhere, on stage, on the radio, everywhere. Mo Rocca has an appreciation of music legend, Burt Bacharach.

What do you get when you fall in love? I'll Never Fall in Love Again came late in the production of the show. He played it for us at the piano.

Even before it was over, we loved it. In 1968, Jonathan Tunick was a young orchestrator working with Burt Bacharach on his Broadway show Promises, Promises. I'll Never Fall in Love Again, with lyrics by Bacharach's longtime collaborator Hal David, would go on to be recorded by their longtime muse, Dionne Warwick.

Just one of the dozens of hits they produced together during the 1960s and 70s. Do you know the way to San Jose? I've been away so long.

I may go wrong and lose my way. The three of us were known in the industry as the triangle marriage that worked. Is that right?

Yeah. We complimented each other and we knew what each of us was capable of doing and it worked. When so many of us listen, especially to Dionne Warwick singing his and Hal David's songs, what are we responding to? The songs give me a sense of warmth. It comes from the sensuous chords combined with the jerky rhythms, contrasting with one another. And those unforgettable melodies.

But when Bacharach was a young man studying composition, as he told Leslie Stahl in 1999, his peers favored an edgier, more dissonant sound. And I had this one, the middle movement of the sonata and I was almost ashamed to play it in class because it was so melodic. It really had a melody and I kind of shuffled it through and played it.

Hoped he didn't catch it, huh? He said, Bert, don't ever, ever feel ashamed of writing something this melodic and that people can remember. The smooth sound of Bert Bacharach has often been described as easy listening, but it was anything but easy to write. He had all the skill and knowledge of having studied the classics and the broad experience of having been a jazz musician. And what's particularly wonderful about Bert is his music was sophisticated, but still totally accessible.

So much went into it. Listen, it's not easy to write music. Writing music is a bitch. So many of the 20th century's most popular vocalists sang Bacharach's music. From Dusty Springfield, to Tom Jones, to The Carpenters, to Elvis Costello, who became a friend and collaborator. To my ear, the strength of his composition all along has been, it's a constantly renewable source. People are always getting their heart broken.

They always want a song. Bert Bacharach enjoyed his success, becoming as famous as most of the singers who covered his songs. Bert could have been another Gershwin. I used to talk to him about it. I said, why don't you write some extended works? And he said, I'd rather just sit at my swimming pool and drink fresh orange juice and be married to a movie star. Bacharach did marry a movie star, Angie Dickinson, the second of his four wives. If somebody told me when I was 15, 16, here's the deal Bert, you're going to wind up being married four times in your life.

I said, come on, no, never happened. That's just, that's not a good boy. That's not like a well behaved, that's hurting too many people. Bert Bacharach's music, melodious and so often melancholic, is likely to keep on making audiences feel good for a long time to come. Sadly, Tuesday also marks the fifth anniversary of one of the deadliest school shootings in American history in Parkland, Florida. Rita Braver is in conversation with David Hogg, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School survivor who found his life's mission that dark day in February. So it's been a long five years, a lot has happened.

Yes, it feels like a lifetime has gone by. It was February 14th, 2018 when David Hogg, then 17, and other terrified students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, sheltered in classrooms and closets as 19-year-old gunmen rampaged through their school. I was really, really scared and I kind of felt like the adrenaline like rushed down like my spine, but I immediately heard in the back of my head my dad's voice, if anything ever happens, you have to stay calm. So locked down with other students, Hogg started recording videos in case they didn't survive. We heard more gunshots and that was when we realized that this was not a drill. Indeed, 17 people were murdered that day, 17 more injured.

Thank you for your prayers and condolences, but that is not enough. Heartbroken, Hogg joined with fellow students like Emma Gonzalez, now known as X, to demand tougher gun laws. He wouldn't have harmed that many students with a knife. And they would build a national movement, March for Our Lives, their first protest in Washington drawing some 800,000 people.

When politicians send their thoughts and prayers with no action, we say no more. As one of the leaders of the movement, Hogg was praised and reviled. But he and his fellow students persevered, pressuring both state and federal lawmakers. Even in their home state, gun-friendly Florida, they helped get the gun purchase age up to 21 and a so-called red flag law that allows guns to be temporarily taken from people who make specific threats, like the one that was sent to David Hogg's mother. And it said F with the NRA and you'll be DOA. So this person lived like 20 minutes away from us. We used the law that we created after Parkland to disarm that individual. And because of the law that we passed, it very may well have stopped me from having to bury my own mother. That's incredible.

Right? And that same law has been used over 6,000 times since Parkland. Seeing these children stand up in a way that adults did not really touch the court with a lot of people. Yes, it is incredibly inspiring that we stood up, but young people having to stand up to not die in their classrooms is not a good sign. It's as good of a sign as a canary passing out in a coal mine is for our democracy. In a way, it was almost like, let the kids do it.

100%. And that is time and time again one of the most incredibly frustrating things, probably the most insulting. It's all the people that we've had come up to us that say, my generation really screwed up, but we're glad that you kids are here to fix it.

And just acting like they have no role in that. It all took a toll. Now 22 and a Harvard senior majoring in history, Hogg is active but not full time working for March for Our Lives. He told us for a few years he just felt numb. You have said that you have post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD.

How are you? Much better, thanks to therapy. My freshman year was really, really, really hard and maybe you call it survivor's guilt. I don't know what it was, but it just didn't feel like I needed to address it because the movement was so important that I just sacrificed everything for it. So I had to just learn to say no and really focus on being a student, which was honestly I think the hardest thing that I had to learn in college. Hogg believes the efforts of gun control advocates in getting scores of laws passed since 2018 have stopped some mass shootings.

But he acknowledges they have still increased, some 600 just last year. And he is especially haunted by the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas that surpassed Parkland with 19 children and two adults killed. What goes through your mind? What goes through your heart as that's happening? Guilt.

It's a lot of guilt. We came out and we literally said never again. Obviously that didn't work, unfortunately. But Hogg plans to continue advocating for more gun control when he graduates this spring. And he has a strategy. Do you see a model out there where there's something else that maybe people thought they'll never overcome the lobby? Yes. And that is? Tobacco.

The tobacco industry is exactly the model that I think of in terms of the decades of work that it will take to address this issue. Look, I'm an American citizen. I'm a gun owner. I have a concealed carry permit. I carry a gun for protection. Indian members of his team may have been heckled on Capitol Hill by Marjorie Taylor Greene, now a Republican Congresswoman. And you have nothing to say, no words. But David Hogg believes that all Americans can and must come together to prevent more mass shootings.

We need to put our politics aside and get something done because ultimately it doesn't matter if you're a Republican or a Democrat, we all have people that we care about and none of us want gun violence to continue. Steve Hartman has a story of forgiveness and turning desperation into hope. The man in the green hoodie is Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, city councilman Ralph Rodriguez trying to scare away a would-be burglar. He was at this window. Literally at the window. I saw him prying into here.

The guy was trying to break into the office of a nonprofit Rodriguez Runs. He just kind of took off. Just kept running that way. Just kept going.

Yep. All the perpetrator left behind was this grainy image on a doorbell camera. So he could have gotten away with it. If only he hadn't reached out to Rodriguez on social media, offering his name and his confession.

I have to be willing to face the consequences and that is what I'm ready to do. For most crime victims, that would be case closed. But for Ralph Rodriguez, it was opportunity opened. He didn't want to add another young man to the prison rolls, especially one with no prior criminal record. So instead of pressing charges, he pressed for answers. So you decide to meet this guy?

Absolutely. And I actually took the time to hear his story. See the environment in which he lives in and I get it. Poverty has a way of pushing you to do things that you would have never imagined you were even capable of doing.

22-year-old Rashawn Turner agreed to talk with us. On condition we not show his face. I made a severe lapse in my judgment that night. My father was struggling with basic needs and I was like, I can't sit here and just wait for what little we still have to be taken away.

I have to do something. And when Ralph Rodriguez heard that, he did something. Making sure he's financially good and has just some clothes on his back. So you started sending him money? Absolutely. And you just tried to rob him? Absolutely.

Yep. Because what he doesn't need anymore is any more disappointments. I'm pretty sure people have told him things in his life and dropped the ball 10 out of 10 times. It's just not what I'm prepared to do. So Rodriguez turned the other cheek. See how close we got to that?

Gave him part-time work painting the very place he just tried to burglarize and set him up with job training. I thought that there would be no one willing to help me, but you never know. You just have to ask. But I wasn't willing to ask. What are you going to do with this chance? Not waste it.

Let me look up this permit test. Ralph Rodriguez. The best kind of crime fighter. You just need a shot. And I'd be remiss if I didn't try my best to get you that shot, man. I wanted to ask you if you'd be my wife.

I don't care what you look like. I would love to be. Really?

Yes. It's Sunday morning on CBS, and here again is Jane Pauley. Love is blind, or so goes the saying. Jonathan Vigliati is talking with a couple who put the expression to the test. From Hollywood, the dating capital of the world, in color, it's The Dating Game. America's love for television love is one for the ages.

Let's bring her on stage right now. When The Dating Game first beamed into homes in 1965, it was love at first sight, at least for the show's passionate viewers. In the years and decades to follow, there would be spin-offs by different names, with new pickup lines, and eventually new rules of attraction. From dating 25 people at once, to getting married first, and asking questions later. But in the family tree of dating shows, there's nothing quite like love is blind. The Netflix series, where singles mingle behind walls, before deciding to pop the question, sight unseen. So eight weeks from hello to I do.

That sounds insane. It does, and you're probably like 100% of the people who sign up for the show, and then in the end they're like, man, I'm a believer. Husband and wife celebrity hosts, Nick and Vanessa Lachey, call Love is Blind a new take on an old way of courting. Welcome to Love is Blind. What I think is so fascinating is it's how love used to be.

People used to, like, if we're going back, back, it's sending letters. And then it was letters and a phone call, and you always courted this person. And there's just conversation. I mean, you get to know someone so intimately, so quickly. I remember specifically someone saying, I dated this girl for three years, and I've already talked to people in these walls more than I have with my girlfriend of three years.

I'm here to find my wife. Once engaged, participants in what producers call a social experiment, meet each other's friends and family before walking down the aisle. For some, the real world is too much. You have single-handedly shattered my self-confidence.

But in the show's three seasons, six couples have gotten married. When you take one of the senses away, your others are heightened. I think you feel more. You listen more.

You're forced to listen, because you can't watch them and get distracted by them. And they're, you know, whether it's a wonky eyebrow. I mean, every now and then I have a wonky eyebrow. Or if he's, like, checking out, like, your cleavage or whatever it is, that's all taken away. When you hit those challenges, the idea is that you can rely and fall back on that incredible emotional connection that allowed you to propose to someone.

That allowed you to get there. That you never have, you know, you never saw before. The Lacheys have hit their own speed bumps on the road to love. Nick Lachey.

Vanessa Manila. They first met in 2003, then just friends. Nick was the lead singer of the boy band 98 Degrees and married to fellow pop star Jessica Simpson. The couple even had their own reality show. Vanessa was a VJ on MTV's Total Request Live, where Nick often appeared as a guest. I'm so excited for this album to be out.

I hope everybody out there went and got it. In 2006, after Nick and Jessica Simpson went through a very public divorce, Nick and Vanessa's chemistry changed. So now we're both single. He told me we had the same birthday.

I'll never forget. We were in New York and I was like, hello, Nick Lachey. It just, it just all came together.

And then I thought, what better way to make sure your music video gets played on TRL than to ask a VJ to star in your music video. So romantic. That romance really picked up on their first official date. It was like 1130 at night and I had come from work. He had been performing. He's like, you want to get a bite to eat? The only thing open in Trenton, New Jersey at 1130 at night was Hooters. So that is our love story.

I'm afraid to ask, what did you order? Well everyone knows they have the best wings. Those wings, take note Valentine's, eventually led to marriage in 2011 and three children. When producers from Love is Blind asked the couple to host the show together, they say there was no hesitation. They made literally our dreams come true in terms of being able to work together, being able to spend time together, making our marriage stronger ultimately in the end. So 15 years, long time for any couple.

Couple in the spotlight. I mean, that's a lifetime. Yeah.

And like hanging on. It's like dog years and like celebrity years we've been together for like a thousand, right? The Lachey's say compromise has helped them hang on. Like when they moved to Honolulu in 2022 so the family could be together while Vanessa taped NCIS Hawaii, the CBS show she stars in.

Jane Tennant, special agent in charge, NCIS Hawaii. Another key comes straight out of the show they host, communication, which is why they started seeing a marriage counselor. I have to work at how I communicate with him. He has to work at understanding me and how I've changed and evolved and we have to work at putting each other first and as our therapist says, turning towards each other, not just physically but emotionally.

I think like anything that's meaningful in your life, it's worth working at. That work has paid off. And how the couple now takes turns answering questions.

What's that? This is how we decide who's doing the chore of answering my question. In love. I hardly ever win. That's a big moment.

And marriage in real life and yes, even on TV. All right, come here. I just want to hug you.

No, no, no. I'm okay. Hugging the wall. Sometimes it's the little gestures that matter most. Love is blind and love is a lot of things. Love is work and it should be a fun job. Good luck. Good love.

It should be something that you're excited to work at. For most of our nation's history, black and white members of the armed forces were anything but equal. Then in 1948, a new law brought segregation to an end. David Martin looks back at the long and painful battle for equality in uniform. Nothing would have kept me from being with you this evening because I and so many other men and women of color who have served this nation in uniform owe so much to President Harry S. Truman and to Executive Order 9981. The late Colin Powell was only 11 years old in 1948 when President Truman issued the Executive Order ending segregation in the armed forces. There shall be equality of treatment and opportunities for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, creed or color. But first, the man from Independence, Missouri had to overcome his upbringing.

Both of my grandparents, previous to the war between the states, owned slaves and my mother died an unreconstructed rebel. This is an example from 1939. Kurt Glam, director of the Truman Library, says the archives contain handwritten examples of his racist views. He says, I went up to the Metropolitan by myself and saw a man about town. It is a very funny show, the N-word steals the screen.

This is how he thinks. Yeah, it had no hesitation, no compunction about using a racial epithet like that. Six years later, as World War II entered its final agony, Truman was thrust into the presidency by the sudden death of Franklin Roosevelt and found himself the commander-in-chief of two armies, one black and one white. The war was a watershed moment in the process of segregation. Charles Bowery, director of the Army's Center for Military History, says the one million African Americans who fought for freedom in uniform while being denied it at home exposed the hypocrisy of segregation. It forwarded the civil rights movement because of the massive scale of service of African Americans in uniform.

It just could not be ignored. You could not ignore the bravery of African Americans. And Truman could not ignore the despicable treatment of black veterans like Isaac Woodard.

Isaac Woodard is an African American soldier who comes home from the war and he's dragged from a bus by South Carolina police and beaten so severely that he permanently loses his sight. And Truman, I think, just says that's enough. Did he do anything about it? He instructed the Justice Department to investigate, an all-white jury acquitted the defendants and life went on in South Carolina. But Harry Truman was not going to let that stand. Speaking from the Lincoln Memorial, Truman became the first president ever to address the NAACP.

There is no justifiable reason for discrimination because of ancestry or religion or race or color. Risky politics for a president seeking the second term. He has enraged the South with his liberal civil rights platform. What was his political future in 1948?

He was on the ropes. He was seen to be someone who likely was not going to win reelection. Days after he was nominated, Truman issued the order to end segregation in the military. What was the Army's reaction to this order? The Army's reaction, particularly in its leadership, was stridently against the executive order.

Truman appointed a committee headed by Charles Fahey to enforce the order. Records show its staff director warning Fahey the Army intends to do as little as possible and might have gotten away with it except for a black civilian who worked at the Pentagon. An individual with deep understanding of the Army's personnel practices. He's the Fahey committee's deep throat.

That's a way to describe it, yes. Roy Davenport is one of history's hidden figures. Using his inside knowledge to show the Fahey committee, the Army's response for desegregation wasn't worth the paper it was written on. What really turns the coin is the Korean War. Desegregation begins in foxholes in Korea. With all-white combat units retreating in the face of the North Korean onslaught, black soldiers were sent in to fight alongside whites. What happens is that these units turn the tide and the Army in Korea is on a path to integration because they have finally and completely disproven this idea that black soldiers cannot be trusted alongside white soldiers. So wars are a forcing mechanism.

They are. So the next war is Vietnam. As the build-up in Vietnam was beginning and the civil rights movement reaching critical mass, Joe Anderson was a cadet at West Point.

Did you ever wonder what am I doing here? I absolutely wondered why I was at the academy when all of our people of black heritage were sitting in encounters and fighting to be treated fairly in the United States. James Fowler, one of only six black colonels in the entire Army at the time, gave him this advice. He said to me, Joe, we have a lot of people that can sit in encounters. We don't have a lot of people that can get through West Point.

That's your job. As he entered his senior year, Anderson was denied a leadership position in the Corps of Cadets. My view is that the academy in 1964 was not ready to have African Americans demonstrate significant leadership in the parades and that kind of thing. Two years after graduating, Anderson became arguably the best known soldier, black or white, in the entire Army. Lieutenant Anderson, 24. Leader of the Anderson platoon, an Oscar and Emmy winning documentary which aired on CBS. It was probably the first time that American had seen an African American in leadership in combat.

Anderson's platoon showed the country what the Army had learned in Korea. In combat, it's about who can get them home safe. But in the rear areas, race still mattered. Black soldiers were not going to take the same kind of treatment that they had taken in civilian life. Hank Thomas is a lion in the winter of his years, but at the age of 19, he was one of the original freedom riders.

A fire bomb was thrown through the back window of the bus, and when I was getting off the bus, I was attacked again physically. Each physical blow was a badge of honor. Sure he was about to be drafted into the Army for his trouble making, Thomas volunteered to become a medic and was sent to Vietnam. The commanding officer was a captain from Mississippi and the supply sergeant was a redneck from Mississippi. Did they use Confederate symbols? There was a group of soldiers in my outfit who flew the Confederate flag.

I tore the flag down and dared anyone to put it up again. Did you have any run-ins with that redneck supply sergeant? The black soldiers came to me and said the sergeant was not giving them new boots.

So I went over to the supply shack, threatened to whip his butt. I almost got court-martialed for it, but I got the boots and the equipment for the black soldiers. After Vietnam, the U.S. abandoned the draft and created an all-volunteer force which attracted recruits by offering better pay and benefits. What it did was dramatically increase the number of African-Americans who raised their hand to serve. Because I was 17, my mother had to sign for me to go in, so 41 and a half years later, here I sit.

Now a lieutenant general, Dimitri Henry joined the Marines in 1981. Did you experience anything that felt like discrimination as you were coming up through the enlisted ranks? I would call it points where individuals would show their disdain for someone who looked like me. So how did they express their disdain? I had a typical name, Colin. The N-word?

Yes. How did you react? I chose not to react.

If you're going to allow someone else to control your emotions, then you've already lost. While Henry was still a sergeant, Colin Powell became the first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. During the first Gulf War against Iraq, Powell showed the nation a black general in charge. Our strategy to go after this army is very, very simple.

First we're going to cut it off and then we're going to kill it. But Dimitri Henry says he still feels judged by the color of his skin. It helps me to focus more because I understand what is being thought about me and what people may decide to do just based solely on what I look like. That sounds like an I'll show them attitude. Unfortunately I think that's exactly what it is.

It's a survival type of tool. Henry survived to become the director of intelligence for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, another first for black Americans in uniform. That happened on the backs and shoulders of others that have gone before and it just builds and builds and builds. Mr. Secretary. Good morning, David. The most obvious result of the forces Harry Truman set in motion 75 years ago is Lloyd Austin, the first African-American defense secretary. Would you be in this job without that order? Probably not.

Probably not. In the two years he's been in the job, Austin has more than doubled the number of black three and four star generals and admirals from 10 to 22. That's a dramatic change. Did you select these generals because they were the best person for the job or did you select them because they are African-American? We selected them because they're the best people for the job. It's been 75 years since Truman issued his executive order. Is there equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces? If you ever stopped striving to achieve that goal of equal opportunity and equal treatment, I think then you'll begin to slide backwards. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning.