Opinion: Remembering Margo Howard

Portrait of the advice columnist Ann Landers and her daughter Margo Howard, January 1, 2003. Michael L Abramson/Getty Images hide caption

Margo Howard was the person you'd hope to be seated next to at a dinner party, to hear her purr anecdotes and observations about all the other guests.

When it was reported this week that Margo had died at the age of 86, a lot of coverage was understandably about the years she wrote the Dear Prudence advice column for Slate , and then another called Dear Margo. Advice was her family business, after all; Margo's mother, Eppie Lederer, spent nearly 50 years writing the widely syndicated column Dear Ann Landers.

I met Howard when I was a young Chicago reporter, and she was a glamorous Chicago columnist. There is a famous story about a party of Chicago journos who repaired back to Howard's place one snowy night, where she invited them to plop their snow-crusted coats in her bedroom. While she heated up some cocoa, I'm sure. A guest who apparently did not know her family background pranced out, howling, "Margo, Margo, how delicious! You have a picture of Ann Landers in your bedroom!"

Howard later wrote a hilarious memoir, 'Eat, Drink, & Remarry', about her four marriages, including to a Hollywood actor and a Boston cardiologist, all of whom she wrote about with affection and respect.

"What good is experience," she told me once, "if you can't learn from it?"

I'd hear from Howard every few weeks, usually right after our show. She'd share some pearl of gossip, or tell how Herschel, her dog, loved one of our stories. One week she listened and wrote, "I heard your Minnesota farmers and Seder in Nepal. Lotta ways to live your life, no?"

The details of those stories have left me, but Howard's sage observation hasn't: "Lotta ways to live your life." Yes…

She'd also drop a line now and then just to ask about my family: "How are The Beauties?"

Once Howard sent me a check to pass along to someone we'd interviewed who had been burned out of their home. She wrote, "I don't think they need more kind words as much as this."

The night white smoke rose from the Sistine Chapel to herald Pope Leo's election, Margo exclaimed, "Mon Dieu. The Pope has a Chicago accent!"

Our birthdays were within a day of each other. My next one, while blessed, will seem a little lonelier without Howard around to bid me, as she did year after year, "Happy birthdays, cupcake. And we soldier on."