One of the longest running success stories of the twentieth century, and perhaps the one that has had the farthest reach around the world, has to be Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking. Less well know, but perhaps of even greater significance, is the success story behind the scenes – the 57 year marriage that has been the foundation of Dr. Peale’s lifework – the partnership with his wife, Ruth. The bond they have created between two people has given strength and courage to millions. PSP is proud to publish, in our new special section called Positive Living, the following exclusive interview with Dr. Peale and Ruth Peale. The interview, conducted by Gerhard and Laura B Gschwandtner, shows how a loving and equal personal partnership can develop into a lasting professional success journey. The Peales’ partnership is a role model for today and for the future.

PSP: We understand that you recently came back from Africa.

Ruth Peale: We had a great time in Africa. It was quite an experience. We went to Kenya and from there went into the bush to Nairobi.

PSP: Where did you stay?

Ruth Peale: There are small hotels but we did some real camping right out in the bush.

Dr. Peale: It’s pretty primitive.

Ruth Peale: We had 13 people in our party and two others with us so there were 15 in all. Of course there was staff that took care of us out there in the bush. We were away from people and right among the animals. We even had to have two armed guards who patrolled the camp all night so we wouldn’t have the lions coming into camp.

PSP: Did you have children with you or was this group all adults?

Ruth Peale: We had our three children, who are all married, and eight grandchildren.

PSP: What a wonderful family experience. Can I ask you a personal question? How old are you both?

Dr. Peale: I’m 89.

Ruth Peale: And I’m 81.

PSP: That’s wonderful. And you did not find this trip too rigorous?

Dr. Peale: No, we travel all the time on speaking engagements. We are used to traveling – we have developed a habit of going to bed early if possible and getting a good night’s sleep. So we stand up to it pretty well.

Ruth Peale: We travel about 150,000 miles a year.

PSP: Incredible. What do you feel is the secret to your success as a couple?

Dr. Peale: That’s easy. We love each other and respect each other as persons. When I married Ruth, I found out that she had a good head on her shoulders. She is a thinker and she is full of ideas. She is a top administrator. She sits on a number of boards in New York City and they say she has the mind of an executive, which I haven’t got. All I can do is talk.

Ruth Peale: I would like to say that we study each other’s strength and each other’s weakness. My theory is that I have the privilege of undergirding Norman’s weakness, which is that he can’t organize things very well. And he undergirds my weakness which is that sometimes I’m a little too abrupt. If you give me a problem, I can come up with an answer right away. Maybe that is good, but it isn’t always so good. So Norman tries to moderate that for me. And then as far as our strengths are concerned, he is the creative person. He must have an atmosphere around him which will make this creativity come forth. So I organize his world to make sure that he is not disturbed when he should be able to write and to concentrate.

Dr. Peale: I would like to say also that with this executive capacity, Ruth has an undiminished femininity. She is a terrific cook and she maintains two homes. They are comfortable, beautiful homes, so she has bridged the gap between career woman and housewife.

Ruth Peale: My theory is that the greatest career is being a wife. And it is a career because you have to work at it all the time and it is never finished. The second greatest career is being a mother. You do those two careers with all your brain and energy, and you still have time to have a career for yourself. But I always emphasize that the greatest career is being a wife. I get a little bit upset when I find some women who can’t “find” themselves. I don’t believe in that at all. I think we as women have a great opportunity to be loving, sensitive, caring persons. We ought not lose that by thinking that we must become masculine.

PSP: There are many successful husband and wife teams, like Ken and Marjorie Blanchard or president and Mrs. Reagan. Some women seem to have elevated their supportive role to really a partnership, a professional partnership. What steps did you take?

Ruth Peale: First, I taught myself to edit. I didn’t have any training but I do edit everything that Norman writes and so professionally we come together in that regard.

Dr. Peale: We go home together and we try to just be homebodies and then in the morning we come to the office together. We have adjoining offices. At Guideposts, we have the same office. I was president of Guideposts from its inception about 40 years ago until about a year ago. Then I suggested that Ruth be president of Guideposts and I was given an inconsequential job called chairman.

PSP: That’s a thinking job.

Dr. Peale: But we work that way. We have a good time doing it and lately, since I got to be 89, Ruth began traveling with me on speaking engagements and she has engagements of her own so we live with a hectic schedule but we are always together.

PSP: Ruth, what do you recommend that women can do to change their role from being supportive to becoming equal without feeling subordinate or competitive?

Ruth Peale: I think that this idea of being subordinate or competitive comes from a lack of love and understanding between couples. There is nothing of that nature between us. And it goes back to what I said in the first place, you have to have great respect for each other. And respect for each other’s skills. And be willing to let each skill rise to the top when the situation demands it.

Dr. Peale: I am glad, as well as honored, that you are going to write an article on this subject. It occurs to me we could do a lot toward correcting the marital situation in this country if we advocated husband wife teams. I once made a speech with a woman at a convention. The topic was “Teach Your Wife to Be a Widow.” The idea was that you must not leave your wife ignorant of business affairs, of your own personal affairs. But I would say a better title would be “Teach Your Wife or Husband To Be A Teammate.”

PSP: When did you start to build your husband and wife team?

Ruth Peale: When we came to New York City in 1932, I was just a very young bride and Norman was busy in Marble Collegiate Church. He was starting to write. He had a counseling problem on his hands and he was very busy in that activity. I discovered that most of the National Denominational Headquarters were in New York City, so I said to Norman, “Why don’t I, beyond activity in the Church which is expected from a pastor’s wife, go into denominational national work and then I can bring home to you the thinking of the leaders of the denominations. So I started with our own denomination, the Reformed Church of America, and I joined the boards of missions and I worked myself up until I was national president and held that office for over 10 years. And then the men’s and women’s boards joined together and I was the first president of the joint boards. Now along with this, I was catapulted into the interdenominational work. So I would be on committees where I would meet with the heads of all the denominations and in this way, I worked myself up until I was vice president of the National Council of Churches. I could bring back to Norman the emphasis, the things that were being talked about nationally and interdenominationally in the church circles. At the same time, we were starting our magazine, Guideposts, and our Foundation for Christian Living, with a magazine called Plus. I had a busy life with all of these activities, and trying to balance them all, as well as being a mother and a wife and a housekeeper.

PSP: It sounds as if you constructively designed your life as a couple?

Dr. Peale: That’s right. We have no sense of competition. I think that we take pride in one another. And we have a depth of affection and a respect and esteem for the other’s ability. Now a wife who is quiet and withdrawn and who serves her husband in the old-fashioned manner is not achieving the potential with which Almighty God endowed her.

Ruth Peale: I have a great deal of difficulty with women who say that they have to find their own identity. I think you find your own potential by creating a good home and I think that’s the greatest thing that you can do. And then you bring up your children and by being there with them, you give them an example. It’s not what you say nearly as much as what you do within the home. And then anything that a woman does on the outside, whether it is getting active in the parent-teacher association or in a social club or in volunteer work of any kind, uses her skills and abilities. I have a great deal of difficulty with this sentence: “I must find myself.”

PSP: Ruth, you mentioned a key word, identity. I think the process involves creating an identity as a couple.

Ruth Peale: That’s right, and not feeling that you have to have an identity that is different from your husband’s identity. Whatever you do is a part of both of you. I am not at all sure that “I must find my own identity” doesn’t confuse or at least form a tangent that could be a separation tangent between husbands and wives.

PSP: What experiences have you had as a couple where you said to yourself, “This is the wrong way to go about it – as a couple, we are far greater. Let’s move in that direction.”

Ruth Peale: Well, I don’t believe that every couple should always agree on everything. It is stimulating to have differences of opinion and out of them may come not only a better understanding but better solutions. The problem is that you must remain under control in such discussions and not get into what I call a fight. You have to keep it where you are talking facts and attitudes. This is one of the great problems in adjustments with young couples. They think that if they get into a disagreement, they have to keep on arguing until the other person changes his or her mind. That isn’t good at all. And you have to keep that discussion under control.

Dr. Peale: We have had plenty of disagreements, but we never fight about them. We usually compromise them or convince the other. I once knew a man who had a seat on the stock exchange, was president of an American shipping line and had a couple of oil companies. He was very wealthy. He had a secretary named Josephine and they were both unmarried. So he said to Josephine, “I want you to question my business decisions.” “Well,” she said, “I don’t know enough about them.” He said, “As my secretary, you know a lot about them. But listen to me and if you think I am wrong, tell me.” So he urged her to argue against him vigorously. Finally, they were married and in a happy team that way for several years. Suddenly he died and I took him out to the cemetery to inter him in the ground. And on the way back, she said, “I’ve got a number of men, associates of my husband, who want to tell me how to run these businesses, or urge me to turn the businesses over to them.” I asked, “Who are these men?” She named them and I said, “Josephine, you are smarter than any one of them. You are as smart as all of them put together. You run your own businesses. Some months after that, she was written up in a magazine as the greatest woman on Wall Street. She became the president of the shipping concern, she became president of the oil companies and she became president of the Wall Street house. She was as good as her husband had been. She preserved them until she herself died a few years later.

PSP: So what you are saying is that a healthy opposition keeps you on your toes.

Dr. Peale: Yes, that’s right.

PSP: So Ruth keeps you on your toes.

Dr. Peale: Yes, she listens to me make a speech and first, as a good wife, she says, “Norman, that was wonderful.” Then she says a little later, “But you know, if you had done this…” That bothered me at first because, I guess, psychologically, I wanted an adoring wife, but I would rather have a smart wife who knows how to adore at the proper time.

Ruth Peale: I rejoice in that story every time I hear it and it also teaches me a lesson which I think every wife should learn. There is a timing in a relationship that is very, very important. A husband comes home from a harassing day at the office and his wife, as soon as she comes in the door, may explain how difficult her day has been and how he needs to have some contact with the children, etc. In other words, she will complain at once. I read an article the other day where a couple, who were having a good deal of difficulty, decided that one thing they needed to change was that when they got together in the evening, he coming from work, maybe she coming from work also or coming from activities of her own, they would have at least a half an hour together when they would talk about nothing but pleasant things and the exciting things that had happened to them. They would not bring any problems into that half hour conversation. It revolutionized their marriage.

Dr. Peale: A woman is different from a man physically, intuitively, emotionally, and I would say, spiritually. But the two of them together form a unity. They should be unified physically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally. And one contributes to the other what the other hasn’t got. That’s union. “And these two shall become one flesh.” They should flow together and be supportive of each other. The general assumption today is that women should be competitive with men and overcome them and dominate them. Nobody should dominate anybody. It should be an equal partnership and that’s what we have had; it has had its rough spots – but not that rough – and we’ve been married now for 57 years.

PSP: That’s amazing.

Ruth Peale: I think most of those rough spots have been very creative because you work through rough spots and you find solutions and that is what it is all about, really and truly.

Dr. Peale: If you asked me what were the rough spots, I couldn’t remember any of them.

PSP: I think it is fascinating that from one couple speaking through Dr. Peale and through your magazine, Guideposts, your concept of positive thinking, such a very eloquent but simple idea, has had such an impact worldwide.

Ruth Peale: That is true, it has circled the globe. Wherever we go – and Norman has spoken all the way from Australia to Indonesia, Japan, Europe, you name it – he has found positive thinking groups that want to have a word from him.

PSP: What differences do you see now from when you first started out? When you were first struggling with the ideas of positive thinking?

Ruth Peale: As you know, the idea has permeated the culture. It has proved statistically that the way you think will affect not only your performance, whether as a student in school or a salesman on the road or a business man dealing with his associates. The positive effects of positive thinking have even gotten into medicine. Thus, positive thinking as an attitude of mind has been proven to be far greater in its results for your good than negative thinking. And I believe those are the things that have happened as far as positive thinking is concerned. Right now, we’ve got a lot of emphasis on sports. You can’t pick up an article about a sports person these days without somewhere in the biography finding that that person, either as a young man or woman or as they were developing, used positive thinking.

PSP: But in the beginning positive thinking was not accepted, was it?

Ruth Peale: Of course, when we first started out, there was a good deal of criticism. It was too simple. People began talking about it without reading Norman in depth and so they started circulating ideas that really weren’t true. But that has all passed. Sometimes lately, Norman will say, “Ruth, there must be something wrong with me. I’m not criticized anymore.” I think the lay people really found out quicker that positive thinking worked than did the intelligentsia, who were a little more sophisticated and weren’t simple enough to just try it. But everybody who tried it, found that it worked. And therefore it began to spread and now has gone around the world.

PSP: Dr. Peale, you talk to a lot of people still. You speak to a lot of audiences and you have a lot of good two-way communication with large numbers of people. Where do you see the biggest need for improvement? As we are headed for the 21st century, what are the new frontiers for positive thinking?

Dr. Peale: I think it’s among young people. Educators have arrived at the conclusion that every baby born in the world is born with a positive attitude. But they also have come up with statistics that by the time those babies have reached the fifth grade, 85 percent have lost the positive attitude and are negatively motivated. So we have a project going now in one of the states. We have got a positive thinking course in every elementary school in that state, some 750 schools.

Ruth Peale: This is part of the program. We started it in kindergarten through the fifth grade. An audio cassette is given to the teacher telling her how to present the program. She is also given a video tape each week, 25 minutes long, but divided into 5 minute segments. Thus she can play for the kids a 5-minute segment. One segment will emphasize one idea like “I can if I think I can.” Another will teach, “I can do it if I just think I can do it.” Now the mother of three at home will have a calendar that she can put on her refrigerator and on that same day, she will have that phrase on the calendar so that the mother and child can have an interplay of ideas at home. We will be able to have a body of statistics at the end of the year showing the difference that this will make. We find that teenage problems today – drugs, alcohol, and suicide – are not the fundamental problems. The fundamental problem is low self-esteem. So we are going to start with kindergarten to help this self-esteem.

Dr. Peale: We think that if carried on widely enough, it can change the character of the entire nation with the development of children with the real positive attitude that characterized America from the very beginning.

PSP: That’s wonderful and at the same time fascinating.

Dr. Peale: Yes, we find it is amazing.

Ruth Peale: I can be so simple as to say to you that I really think the Good God has led us to this particular program because He has brought the proper people to us when we were struggling with the idea and we have now been able to bring it to fruition. This is the first year and you wait until next year and the next year and the next year. Our goal, our dream, our expectations are that we are going to carry this nationwide.

PSP: Do you feel that you have gotten wiser with age? Are older people really wiser?

Dr. Peale: If they are humble they are. If they are still open to new thoughts, new ideas, fresh insights, they are wiser.

Ruth Peale: In age, you have the advantage of maturity combined with knowing whether something has worked in the past. You can combine humility and maturity along with experiences in a mind that is always open to new ideas.

PSP: Thank you.