When Janice Powell's husband went to prison, he wrote her a letter every day for eight years. When he was at home, he'd drink and get violent, but Janice said that the years in prison were the best of their relationship.

Genevieve Jurgensen and her husband Laurent lost their two daughters, Elise and Mathilde, at the ages of 4 and 7. Actress Felicity Jones reads from Jurgensen's book, The Disappearance: A Memoir of Loss, in which Jurgensen tries to explain her children's lives and their deaths to a friend through a series of letters.

Will Seymour reads letters he and his grandmother exchanged when he was in high school. He was miserable at the time—his parents had just gotten divorced and he had no friends—and so was his grandma.

Zarna Garg had a clear plan for how she was going to find a husband.

Writer Achy Obejas reads a piece of short fiction from her book, We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? (11 minutes)

Sandra's father decides, at age 70, to take a Chinese wife.

The small town dilemma.

Sarah Vowell tells the story of Page Smith and Eloise Pickard Smith. They were married for over five decades, and died a day apart.

Adam Felber explains how legalized gay marriage are ruining his marriage with his wife. (His comments first appeared on his blog felbers.net.) And Ira talks about legal strategies with Matt Staver, the head of the group defending traditional marriage in the California lawsuits; and with David Cruz, a law professor at the University of Southern California.

Eight-year-old Betsy Walter goes on a campaign to understand her parents' divorce.

We turn now to one of the loneliest experiences a person can have: marriage. Ira listens to two people trying to break through what’s going wrong in their marriage, an excerpt from a new podcast in which real couples have a real therapy session with a real therapist, Esther Perel.

It's possible to turn off your emotions and go on autopilot for brief periods with the people you love, and it's possible to shut them down completely. Writer Dani Shapiro reads from her memoir Slow Motion: A True Story.

Richard Bausch reads his story Letter to the Lady of the House.

So what if you held onto a high-school crush? Under what conditions would it never go away? Tobias Wolff reads a short story called "Kiss." (38 minutes)

Over the course of his life, Keith Aldrich was a child of the Depression; an aspiring Hollywood actor; a self-styled Beat writer, a member of the New York literati, and then a hippie. Then in the 80's, he became a born-again Christian.

Writer Julie Showalter on her parents' romance.

Jackie and Kenny Wharton were kids in the tiny town of Canalou, Missouri, off of old Highway 61. They moved away for 40 years but always dreamed of moving back.

The story of an Iranian couple who were unhappily married for 27 years. He had a temper.

Ira visits marital researcher John Gottman, who's part of a generation of researchers that have revolutionized the way we see marriage by observing successful and unsuccessful marriages and trying to figure out what the successful happy ones are doing that the ones who end up in divorce are not. Marriage research and links to marriage education programs for couples are online at www.smartmarriages.com.