Car Talk Saved My Relationship

 

True Story. Car Talk saved my marriage before we were even married. Hell, we weren’t even engaged.

It was 1999, just around the time Mac Daddy and I were somewhere on the spectrum of being “on a break.” How puerile of us, right? Apparently we maintained our youth by acting like adolescents. One summer weekend we had joined a posse of dear friends for our annual jaunt to Alpine Valley to see Jimmy Buffett. These weekends always started with a night in Madison, Wisconsin, the consummate college town (and Mac Daddy’s alma mater). 

On this particular weekend we had gone out to some old haunts. A good time was had by all. Until the good became bad. Oh, so bad. I shudder at the thought. Truth be told, neither one of us remembers what sparked the fight, or what fueled it. But it was a couple’s fight of epic proportions.Rick Riordon’s mythologically-based battles have nothing on what Mac Daddy and I spewed that night. We abruptly stormed off, nearly toppling our bar stools as we marched away in a full blown tizzy. We were fired up and yelling all the way to the hotel. I have no recollection of the exchange, but I do know that at some point Mac Daddy was on the phone trying to catch a bus or train back home to Minneapolis, and I had charged down to the front desk to get my own hotel room.

And we seethed all night.

The next morning we told our friends to sell our concert tickets. Irreparable damage had been done. We were going home. They looked at us with shoulders slumped and mouths agape. No cajoling was going to repair what had been shattered. I dragged myself to my car. Mac Daddy was supposed to take a bus or something, but as I was getting in my car he said, “There’s no way I’m taking a bus back because of all this. You drove me here. You’ll drive me home if you’re headed there anyway.” It was the least I could do. Though I don’t really know what we fought about, I do know I owned the escalation. And so we drove off, our friends waving in a stupor, no one quite grasping what just happened.

For the first 30 miles we drove in silence. The air between us sour and thick. My hands gripped the steering wheel of my new Saturn so tightly I started to lose feeling in my hands. I tried to steal a glimpse of Mac Daddy, who just stared at the passing countryside, lips pursed, eyes steely and fixed. His hand reached to the middle console. My heart skipped. Was he going to reach for my thigh in a show of forgiveness and sorrow? No, he popped in a CD (Remember, this was 1999.) 

And this is what I heard, blasting with extra bass.

Inside my head I was ROARING mad. My ears were bleeding, and I swallowed the bile creeping up into my throat. I mean really, the first line of the song is “I need a lover that won’t drive me crazy.” I slammed off the power and glared at Mac Daddy. To this day he claims he didn’t know that particular CD was in the slot, but it’s precisely his MO to do something like this. It’s what I love and detest about him, depending on which side of his ire I fall. I wanted to yell and curse and kick him out of the car. He maintained a smug smirk. I know now that he had been mortified, bracing himself to deal with more of the Medusa version of me. 

This is where Click and Clack come in.

The silence unbearable, I turned the radio dial to NPR. Car Talk was on. Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, aka Tom and Ray Magliozzi, were bantering. Their Boston accents and jabs punctuated the thick air between us. Tom’s inimitable laugh pierced the airwaves. That laugh saved us. It’s an impossible feat to hear Tom’s laugh and not let your lips turn upwards into a smile. As hurt and anger tattered us that day, listening to Car Talk swept away the weight of anger, replacing it with guttural guffaws. Mac Daddy and I looked at each other, he reached across the console and took my hand, I gave his a squeeze. And we laughed and laughed between spurts of apologies. We hurried to the nearest gas station to call our friends. We were halfway between Madison and Minneapolis. Save our tickets! we screamed into the phone. We’re coming back! We hauled it back in time to meet up with our friends, partake of margaritas, and sway to the melody of what would become our wedding song six months later.

They thought we were crazy. We were. We still are crazy…about each other.

As a nod to Click and Clack, we did invite them to our wedding (They didn’t come.). Almost 15 years later we still admit we owe them thanks for repairing our relationship that fateful day. And now it’s a weekend drive time ritual to listen to Car Talk with our two sons.

RIP Tom Magliozzi.

Car Talk executive producer Doug Berman wrote, “Please note that the Magliozzi family is asking that in lieu of flowers, friends and listeners make a donation to either the Alzheimer’s Association or their favorite public radio stations in Tom’s memory. It’s just one more gift to us from a guy who gave so much to our network and its listeners over the decades.”