You know what they say about love and marriage -- you eat the cake and everyone lives happily ever after. Well, maybe not always. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, what makes marriage work? The role of love and passion in marriage and in life, from novelist Marilyn French to poet Mark Doty. Also, a single father tells what went wrong.

SEGMENT 1

Charlotte Mayerson interviewed women from twenty six to sixty nine years old for her book "Goin' to the Chapel: Dreams of Love, Realities of Marriage." She tells Judith Strasser that men and women should think of their mates as life-partners and choose them based on shared goals, lifestyles and values; and that sex plays a more important role in the marriages of older women than it does for younger women. Also, novelist Marilyn French explores an older woman's bout with passionate love in her book "My Summer with George." She tells Judith Strasser that desire can decimate anyone regardless of age or circumstances and that it can never be done away with.

SEGMENT 2:

Novelist John Thorndike tells Jim Fleming how he became a single father: his wife developed adult-onset schizophrenia and became a danger to herself and their son. Thorndike tells the family's story is a memoir called "Another Way Home."

SEGMENT 3:

Poet Mark Doty lost his lover to AIDS. He wrote about the experience, and how he survived it, in a lyrical memoir called "Heaven's Coast." Doty tells Steve Paulson that dealing with his partner's disease and death helped him reach a deeper understanding of their particular life, and of life in general. He says his gratitude for having had the relationship at all is equal to his grief that it ended.

Distribution dates:

• week of 04/27/97 - hour 3
• week of 07/12/98 - hour 3