“Love Boat” Captain Gavin MacLeod Interview

Full transcript of “Love Boat” Captain Gavin MacLeod Interview on The Dr. Susan Block Show:

Okay brothers and sisters, we're very excited. We're here at the Hollywood Show and we're about to say hello to Gavin McLeod. This is your captain speaking. Captain, it's a thrill to be here with you on your loveboat. You too, Marilyn. I love your skirt.

Oh, thank you for noticing I have it on my Hollywood screen. How could I not notice? And then the top isn't bad either. Are you kidding me? Thank you so much. I'm so excited to read your book. This is your captain speaking. It's doing very well. Yeah, it's doing very well and I'm very pleased with it.

I'm just so in awe of all the couples that you kind of brought together. Yeah. I didn't know you knew all that. Yes, that's true. That's true. And on Trinity Broadcasting Network too we had a program for 17 years and so we were able to bring people that way too back together.

That's a beautiful thing. Yeah, it gives you a good purpose of life. And I'm just trying to talk on the microphone too because I've only got one mic. No, it's okay. It's okay. You have such an amazing love story with your wife.

Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, we were married for many years. We're married. Hello there. We're married for many years and then I just got so enthralled with my business here that I just put it before my wife and family and everything else.

The work became the number one issue in my life and so we got a divorce. And three years, my wife during that period, she didn't want that. She went to shrink some both coasts and they all said the man doesn't want to be married. The bottom line is in that the end of that three-year period, Jerry Lewis's first wife took

my wife in the afternoon to a meeting of these ladies praying in Beverly Hills. It was a prayer group and they said to her, would you like prayer for something? I liked my husband back. That was me. Yeah. In the meantime, my mother was going through a thing with her head.

It's a sister size of a baseball inside her left brain. And they had the operation that morning. I woke up in bed and I just prayed to Jesus. I said, you give my mother more time. I'll turn my life over to you. And something told me to call Patty. That's my wife.

I called her. We talked about things and she's, I belong to a group called Ladies, L-A-D-I-E-S. I said, what does that stand for? She said, life after divorce can eventually be sane. A support group of all these wives and these guys.

They used to go all over helping other women who were dumped. That's the word, dumped. And so we were reunited and we came together and I remember knocking on the door, made an appointment to see my wife. And we hugged and she said, I'm sorry your dinner is cold. It's been waiting for three years.

And that was the beginning of our whole, our whole getting back together. And then we both became born again and really gave our lives to Jesus. And it's been a, it's been a great ride ever since. We never had fathers in our lives. And then we realized through this,

we have our real father who's there 24 seven taking care of us. So it's given us a whole new purpose of life and, and love, real love. And so we have a three-fold covenant which we have three people in this marriage. We have Jesus, Patty and Gavin. And so you're not going to leave any one of them.

You know what I mean? And I want to tell you how beautiful you are and how outstanding you look today with all these people I saw you before. And thank you so much for spending that much time with me. Thank you so much captain. And I just want to say, you know,

a lot of people represent Jesus in all different ways. But to represent Jesus as love, that's a beautiful thing. And I really appreciate that. God bless you.

God bless you. I want to ask you, how many times have you been at the Hollywood show? Do you know? This is my first time.

Oh really? To be kind. No, but this is, it's just that I've been having a ball here seeing people. And you, you, you, I've never done this. I love, it's just fabulous to help me. And we have people bringing up things that I didn't even know existed in my career.

So I'm very anxious to bring up home to show my wife tonight. A lot of them have photographs and all kinds of things with my career, with my wife's in the pictures, some of the things we've done together. So I can't wait to share that tonight.

But I think this is just a wonderful thing. And certain people are really into a vicarious kind of sensations of living. And this is really a great for them too. You know, I used to watch the love boat.

And I watched a segment the other night because I tweeted at you and you tweeted back to me that we would see each other here. And I watched the one with Charo. And oh, it was so warm and sweet and wonderful.

You're just the greatest. Well, she's the greatest. And she, we just did the talk show. We had a big reunion.

All of us on the love boat. They honored the love boat. And they said, we have a surprise guest. We were almost finished with the show.

And in comes Charo with this red outfit, you know, taking the whole thing over. She's fabulous. Well, you're still Salem captain. And I'm happy to see that.

Thank you. I've been representing Princess Cruises ever since the show went off the air. We started with three small ships. We now have 17 mega ships.

The Royal Princess just came out in October. And we have a new one coming next year. So I've got a wonderful life for me. You do.

You're a lucky guy. And I guess your wife is a lucky lady. I'd love to talk to her sometime. Find out her secret.

Well, she's just really a very, very special person. Thank you. Thank you for sharing with us here at the Hollywood show. This is your captain speaking.

That's the book. Actually, do you mind if I get around here and let's just do this for a second? Here we go. This is your captain speaking.

And this is us. And your captain is very happy at this moment. Aw. And I'm sure your wife would appreciate that.

She would. Thank you so much. Oh, do that one more time. Love, exciting in you.

I love you. And I love you. Okay. I'm going to bring my husband over sometime.

You bring your wife over. We'll go on a cruise. That's the way to do it. Okay.

Princess all the way. Okay, babe. Thank you so much. Thank you.