…It wouldn’t just transform the marriages — it would ripple out to affect the children and grandchildren of those marriages. It would reduce the violence in our culture because so often, people who grow up to be violent come from violent, chaotic, or deeply troubled home lives. I like to say that respect is the fertilizer that nurtures love. When I learned to treat Jim with respect, I noticed something incredible. After just a few weeks, I started feeling more self-respect, too. And over time, respecting others became something I did not just for my marriage but for myself. So, when people learn to treat others with respect, it doesn’t just save marriages or help children grow up in happy, loving homes — it starts to spread. Respect becomes something you give to everyone around you, and that changes the atmosphere in families, neighborhoods, and communities. If more people had healthy, thriving marriages built on respect, the world would be a much more respectful and, ultimately, a much happier place…
I had the pleasure of talking with Nancy Landrum. Nancy is a relationship coach, author, and advocate for marriage education, whose work centers on equipping couples with the tools to build enduring, respectful, and loving relationships. Drawing on personal experience and decades of professional practice, Landrum provides actionable guidance to couples navigating the challenges of communication, conflict resolution, and family dynamics. Her coaching style emphasizes respect and intentionality as cornerstones of a thriving partnership, an approach she developed through her own transformative journey.
Landrum’s passion for helping couples stems from early experiences in her own family. Growing up in a household marked by discord, she resolved as a child to create a different model for her own relationships. That aspiration became a lifelong mission, bolstered by a vision she had as a seven-year-old: writing books to help others build happier marriages. Her commitment to this goal never wavered, even as her path to becoming a relationship coach unfolded gradually over decades.
Her journey was not without challenges. Landrum’s first husband passed away when she was a young mother, leaving her to raise two sons alone. Years later, she remarried Jim Landrum, a widower with three children, and together they navigated the complexities of stepfamily dynamics. The early years of their marriage were fraught with conflict, particularly over parenting styles, leading to frequent arguments. Determined to preserve their relationship, the couple sought help, eventually discovering a coach who introduced them to key communication and anger management skills. This marked a turning point in their marriage, culminating in an agreement to uphold mutual respect as a non-negotiable standard. The result was a harmonious and deeply fulfilling partnership that lasted 17 years until Jim’s passing.
Inspired by their success, the couple co-authored How to Stay Married & Love It: Solving the Puzzle of a Soulmate Marriage, the first of Nancy Landrum’s eight books. They began teaching relationship skills at local churches and stepfamily support groups, sharing strategies to help others achieve what they had learned. Landrum later pursued a master’s degree in spiritual psychology to deepen her expertise, further solidifying her credibility in the field.
Following Jim’s death, Landrum continued their work, developing a private coaching practice and expanding her outreach through additional books, webinars, and digital courses. In 2016, she launched the Millionaire Marriage Club, an online program offering couples practical tools to improve communication, build emotional connections, and resolve conflicts without fighting. Recognizing the unique challenges faced by blended families, she later created a specialized version of the course, Millionaire Marriage Club: The Stepping Together Edition, which incorporates research-backed strategies for stepfamilies.
Landrum’s approach to coaching distinguishes her from traditional marriage counseling. She emphasizes skill-building and accountability, empowering couples to take ownership of their relationship dynamics. Her clients often come to her as a last resort, on the brink of divorce, but many find renewed hope and happiness through her methods. Landrum sees this work not only as a way to save individual marriages but also as a means to strengthen families and communities.
A vocal advocate for the value of marriage education, Landrum envisions a cultural shift where seeking help for a troubled marriage becomes as routine as any other form of self-improvement. She believes that equipping couples with communication and conflict management skills can dramatically reduce the divorce rate and its far-reaching consequences. Her ultimate goal is to normalize the idea of marriage coaching as a proactive, preventative measure, fostering healthier relationships across generations.
Landrum’s impact extends beyond her coaching sessions. Her writings, public speaking engagements, and online courses have reached audiences worldwide. She remains deeply committed to her mission, often collaborating with other professionals to raise awareness about the benefits of marriage education. Despite the emotional demands of her work, she finds immense fulfillment in witnessing her clients’ transformations and the ripple effects on their families.
Through her resilience, dedication, and expertise, Nancy Landrum has emerged as a leading voice in relationship coaching. Her story serves as a testament to the power of respect, intentionality, and perseverance in creating lasting love. For those willing to embrace change and invest in their relationships, Landrum offers not just guidance but hope for a brighter, more connected future.
Yitzi: Nancy, it’s an honor to interview you. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn about your personal origin story — the story of your childhood and how you grew up. Could you share that with us for a few minutes? Tell us about how you grew up.
Nancy: Well, I had very responsible parents, and they were good in many ways, but they didn’t know how to treat each other very well. Even as a very young child, it really hurt me to hear the bickering that went on between them. It felt so disrespectful, although as a child, I didn’t even know the meaning of that word. It just hurt me. So, at a very young age, I decided I was going to have a happier, more loving marriage than it seemed like they had.
By the time I learned to read, I became an avid reader. I literally saw myself sitting at a desk, writing books that would help other people have happier relationships. I presume that vision was sent by the God I believe in and worship, or the universe — whatever you want to call it. But it was a pretty amazing vision for a seven-year-old to have, and that guided the course of my life.
Yitzi: Amazing. So can you tell us about how your career developed?
Nancy: Well, very slowly. Good thing I didn’t know as a child that it would take about 40 years before I had anything worth writing about or sharing with anyone else. I learned a few valuable lessons in my first marriage, but my husband died very young and left me as a single mom with two baby boys — that wasn’t part of my life plan. And it took quite a while to recover from that trauma.
Eventually, I really enjoyed being a mom of two very rambunctious boys. I think I’d been a widow for about 13 years when a mutual friend introduced me to Jim Landrum, who also was widowed, and had three children. We thought we were adults, we were mature, we could handle anything. But the very unique dynamics of stepfamily life kind of threw us a curveball.
We had one particular issue that’s fairly typical in stepfamilies. And because we didn’t have the skills to navigate through that issue very well, we began arguing or fighting more frequently until finally, finally, we agreed that we needed help. If we’d been able to resolve it on our own, we would have years before. But it was pretty — we were pretty desperate.
And for — we saw three different therapists, we read books, we went to workshops, and nothing really significantly helped us until we found a coach that began to teach us how to deliver our messages to each other using respectful language rather than language that felt attacking. And she also gave us some very simple anger management skills that we needed by that time.
And we were — the good thing about being so desperate was that we were willing to put anything into practice that looked like it might help. So we sat down one day to talk about our big issue that we’d been fighting about. And we made it through 45 minutes of carefully wording what we had to say to each other in the language our coach was teaching us, which is kind of known in communication circles as “I language” rather than the accusatory “you.”
But we made it through 45 minutes without it escalating into a fight for the very first time. We were kind of exhausted from the effort. We agreed to set it aside for that day and talk about it again the next day. We stood, and Jim held his arms open to me. And as I stepped into his arms, he said, “That felt so respectful. Let’s do our best to treat each other with respect.”
So that became our new agenda. I kind of laugh because my previous agenda was to convince Jim that he was wrong and I was right. And of course, that was his agenda as well. But as soon as our agenda became treating each other with respect, 24/7, no exceptions, and we held each other to that line relentlessly — you know, we didn’t let the other get away with any hint of disrespect.
So it took about maybe a month or six weeks for us to develop the habit of always speaking respectfully to each other. And in that length of time, we’d had multiple discussions about our hot issue. And even within about six weeks, we found a solution that we were both willing to agree to resolve the issue.
We never had another fight, though, from that first day that we agreed, committed to always treating each other with respect. And we had 17 more years together without even ever a harsh word between us. My clients don’t believe me. You know, they think it’s impossible. But if we hadn’t done it, I would agree with them. It was hard. It was very hard. But it is possible.
So if a couple that I’m working with isn’t willing to do this — to be respectful, to learn how to be respectful — then it’s simply because they don’t want it badly enough or they’re not willing to change.
Yitzi: OK, so what was your next step after this realization? How did you take this and turn it into a practice and a career?
Nancy: About two years later, Jim suggested that we start teaching a class to share what we had learned with other couples, because we had such a hard time finding practical, effective help ourselves. So we — I believe it was Jim — came up with the title How to Stay Married and Love It, because we wanted to stay married, like our parents had, but we wanted to love it more than it seemed like they did.
We started teaching classes at our local church, other churches in the area, and even in our home. We were guest speakers at marriage groups, and we taught several times at a large stepfamily support group that had about thirty-five to fifty people. We shared what we had learned about stepfamilies.
Initially, we thought we were total failures at co-parenting in a stepfamily. But around that time, we came across research on stepfamily dynamics, and we realized that the issue we were struggling with was actually very common. What’s more, the way we eventually resolved it aligned with what the research recommended.
The key was that the biological parent needed to remain the primary parent of their child or children, and the stepparent’s role was simply to support the biological parent’s parenting decisions — whether you agree with them or not, and even if it’s not the way you would parent. The stepparent’s job is to support the biological parent.
That was a tough pill for me to swallow because I was so sure Jim was making some big mistakes with his child. But something interesting happened when I stepped out of the picture and stopped trying to be an authority figure with his son. Jim had expected his son’s behavior to improve when I wasn’t involved, but instead, his behavior got worse.
And because Jim didn’t have to go through me or feel like he had to prove himself to me, he started stepping up and becoming a better parent — the kind of parent I had been trying to encourage him to be all along. But parenting is such a sensitive issue for most people. It’s hard to take advice about what you’re doing wrong as a parent. Very few people are open to that kind of feedback.
Yitzi: So you started this class, and then what happened with that? How did you market it? How long did it last? How did that turn into your full-time career?
Nancy: Well, in the meantime, you know, all the best directions in my life seem to have come from Jim, but he suggested that it may be time to go back and get my master’s degree, because there are many people in the world that respect a degree after my name, not just what I know. So I did. I was getting my master’s degree while we were teaching this class. And as soon as graduation was over, a few months later, I began writing the book, How to Stay Married and Love It.
We also found out about some national marriage education conferences, and we began attending those yearly conferences. They — I think they were — I’ve, gosh, I can — the name of them has left my brain. They are no longer — that particular conference is no longer happening.
But there are other marriage conferences where people who really believe in marriage and are doing whatever they can to educate couples to have better marriages get together. So we took our book to that conference and launched it and met some amazing people that are still friends today.
And then two years later, Jim was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And so everything, as far as the business was concerned, came to a halt to do our best to help him fight cancer. He lost that battle a year later. It took me about a year to recover, and I slowly began volunteering with a nonprofit organization.
I began teaching classes that had skills that very closely aligned with what Jim and I had been teaching. And I eventually began working for them. I developed a curriculum for them and trained teachers how to teach the curriculum until I was ready to get back on my own again.
And then I began developing a private coaching practice and wrote seven more books. And gosh, that brings me up to today. In 2016, I developed an online course called Millionaire Marriage Club. And then two years ago, a year and a half maybe ago, I developed an online course for step couples called Millionaire Marriage Club: The Stepping Together Edition that adds a lot of research-validated strategies to help stepfamilies succeed.
So all together, you know, all together, I’ve been coaching couples or teaching or writing for almost 30 years.
Yitzi: Where do you see yourself going from here? What’s your big idea that you think you would like to spread in the world?
Nancy: The biggest idea I have is to lower the divorce rate by promoting the value of marriage education. So many of the couples I coach come to me on the brink of filing for divorce. It’s like I’m their last-ditch effort, and I regret that because, by the time they’re that desperate, it’s often harder for them to fully apply themselves to learning new skills. There’s this cultural assumption that when you’re that unhappy in a marriage, the only option is divorce.
But I’ve worked with so many couples — those who are willing to learn new skills, new ways of communicating, and new ways of handling anger during disagreements — and they end up happier with each other than they’ve ever been before. They’re often so full of gratitude that they found me. Many of them have already been to one, two, or even three marriage coaches, classes, or counselors, but they didn’t get the specific help they needed.
Thanks to Authority Magazine, I’ve had the privilege of interviewing dozens of therapists and happily married couples who want to spread the message that it’s possible to be happily married and to have a marriage that lasts a lifetime.
So my big idea is to start a movement — maybe in collaboration with some of these therapists or couples — to change the cultural perception of marriage. First, we need to tackle the hurdle of even asking for help. I think, especially in American culture, there’s this “do-it-yourself” mentality that makes people hesitate to seek support. That same mindset kept my husband and me from getting help for a long time. We thought, “We’re smart people; we should be able to figure this out on our own.” But the truth was, we couldn’t.
I’d love for this movement to normalize asking for marriage help and to make it feel as natural as paying your utilities. Imagine couples having a marriage coach they see regularly — once a month, for instance — to help them stay on track. That way, they can nurture and sustain the love that brought them together in the first place.
Yitzi: Well, what do you think you need to do to spread this idea to widespread adoption?
Nancy: Honestly, I don’t know. I’m just — well, probably what you’d call an elderly woman, sitting here in my little corner of Southern California, doing what I love: helping couples love each other. My only idea so far is to reach out to some of the therapists I’ve interviewed. Many of them have expressed the same frustration — that couples come to them when they’re desperate, often almost too late — and they share my passion for wanting to lower the divorce rate.
Rather than seeing divorce as the only option for an unhappy marriage, we need to present another option — one that’s so attractive and accessible that couples no longer assume divorce is their only way out.
I want to share a quote I came across during my research. It’s from the Capital Resource Institute, a Sacramento-based organization that studied the long-term effects of no-fault divorce. Here’s the quote:
“If a disease were to afflict the majority of the populace, spreading pain and dysfunction throughout all age groups, we would be frantically searching for reasonable solutions. Yet this particular scourge has become so endemic that it is virtually ignored. The scourge is divorce, an oddly neglected topic in a nation that has the worst record of broken marriages in the entire world.”
This report goes on to highlight the unintended consequences of divorce. The no-fault divorce law was initially intended to help people leave abusive marriages, and of course, there are abusive marriages that absolutely need to end. But the majority of marriages — well, in 30 years of coaching couples, I’ve only ever recommended divorce twice. Every other couple I’ve worked with — hundreds of them — had the capacity to learn better skills and create the happy, loving marriage they thought they were getting when they said “I do.”
When the no-fault divorce laws were passed in the 1960s, it was a social experiment. And unfortunately, the unintended consequences have been devastating. Children today are growing up without confidence that a happy, lasting marriage is even possible, because they don’t see those kinds of marriages around them. Divorce impacts children’s schoolwork, their physical health, and their mental well-being. It also deeply affects the mental and physical health of the adults involved.
The price of divorce is just too great.
Yitzi: Can you describe what the world would look like if you were successful? What if everyone received marriage education? What would the world be like if many more people had successful, healthy, thriving marriages?
Nancy: It wouldn’t just transform the marriages — it would ripple out to affect the children and grandchildren of those marriages. It would reduce the violence in our culture because so often, people who grow up to be violent come from violent, chaotic, or deeply troubled home lives.
I like to say that respect is the fertilizer that nurtures love. When I learned to treat Jim with respect, I noticed something incredible. After just a few weeks, I started feeling more self-respect, too. And over time, respecting others became something I did not just for my marriage but for myself.
So, when people learn to treat others with respect, it doesn’t just save marriages or help children grow up in happy, loving homes — it starts to spread. Respect becomes something you give to everyone around you, and that changes the atmosphere in families, neighborhoods, and communities.
If more people had healthy, thriving marriages built on respect, the world would be a much more respectful and, ultimately, a much happier place.
Yitzi: Unbelievable. Now, thinking about the law of unintended consequences, are there potential drawbacks we should consider before your movement gains momentum and becomes widespread?
Nancy: Divorce would absolutely still need to be available for people in situations of untreatable domestic violence or if their children are being sexually abused. Divorce would remain an option for those who need to escape damaging and dangerous marriages. But I believe those cases account for maybe five percent of the divorces filed today.
The vast majority of people who apply for divorce today are just frustrated and angry. They feel like their needs aren’t being met, but that’s often because they don’t have the skills to make that happen. They don’t know how to communicate effectively, how to resolve conflict, or how to meet each other’s needs in healthy ways.
So I don’t see any significant negative consequences to this movement, other than ensuring we avoid going back to the days, a century ago, when women were trapped in marriages where they were being beaten or children were being abused. That’s not at all what I’m advocating. I have no desire to return to that kind of situation.
But for the majority of couples, those extreme circumstances aren’t the issue. The common scenario is more of a misconception — a kind of Pollyanna-ish belief that, “I’m unhappy in this marriage. My needs aren’t being met. We’re fighting all the time. The only solution is to leave and find someone better.”
The problem with that thinking is that the divorce statistics don’t support it. Second and third marriages actually have higher divorce rates than first marriages. So if you leave your first marriage without learning better communication and relationship skills, you’ll just carry those same issues into the next one. Most likely, you’ll end up in the same unhappy situation all over again.
Yitzi: Do you have five things you wish somebody told you? Five things that you know now that you wish somebody told you when you first started your career as a marriage therapist?
Nancy: I think the most painful lesson has been realizing that I can’t save everyone. I can’t save every marriage. The couple has to be willing to make changes and stick to those changes long enough for them to become habits. Without that commitment, there’s only so much I can do.
The second thing I’ve learned is how important it is to take care of myself. This career is incredibly rewarding, but it’s also emotionally demanding, especially when you’re working with troubled couples. Self-care is non-negotiable.
The third thing I wish I’d known is just how rewarding this work can be. Seeing a couple transform their marriage from angry and unhappy to “couldn’t be happier” is one of the most fulfilling experiences I’ve ever had. Watching them resolve their issues and find joy together makes everything worth it.
The fourth thing I’ve come to understand more deeply over the years is how much a happy, loving marriage impacts not just the couple, but their children and even their grandchildren. When couples learn new skills and turn their relationship around, it often creates a ripple effect. One of the greatest joys of my work is hearing how couples are applying what they’ve learned with their children. It means those kids are growing up in a much more loving, supportive environment than they would have had otherwise. That kind of legacy is incredible to witness.
And fifth, I’ve been amazed by the doors this work has opened for me. The books I’ve written, the people I’ve been able to help, and the opportunities I’ve had — like working with Authority Magazine — have been beyond anything I could have imagined. When my husband, Jim, passed away, I thought my life might be over. But I knew deep down that it wasn’t.
At the time, we had a few baby grandchildren, and while I’ve done plenty of babysitting, cooking, and making cookies for them, I knew I wasn’t meant to just stay at home. I wanted to keep pursuing my life’s purpose for as long as I have breath. Following this path has been one of the most rewarding journeys of my life.
Yitzi: Here’s our final question. Do you have a favorite life lesson quote, and can you share how that resonated with you in your life?
Nancy: Thank you for that question. I have several I could share, but one stands out. When I was in my master’s degree program, my older son was dying due to his drug addiction. One of our first assignments was to create an affirmation to support us through the program, and I came up with this: “I am walking in peace as I’m trusting the path to unfold.”
I still have it handwritten and framed on my desk. It brings tears to my eyes even today because it reminds me that, sometimes, the only thing we can do is put one foot in front of the other, day by day, and do our best to stay at peace. I tend to be a worrier, so I’ve had to work hard at not letting worry take over. But trusting that my path is unfolding as it’s meant to has been such a grounding force for me.
When I decided, as a three-year-old, that I was going to have a happier marriage than my parents, I couldn’t have imagined the path my life would take, but this affirmation has been a constant guide for me.
Yitzi: How can our readers continue to follow your work? How can they engage your services? How can they join you in manifesting your mission, manifesting this movement?
Nancy: If you’d like to join the movement, you can email me at [email protected]. Just put “Yes to Marriage” in the subject line, and you’ll be added to a new mailing list of people who want to stay informed about this mission.
You can also visit my website, nancylandrum.com, to learn more about my books, online courses, and services. Through the site, you can also book an appointment with me. I’ve coached couples via Zoom, so while I’m based in Southern California, I’ve worked with couples in Canada, Washington, Texas, and even Australia.
This technology — though I sometimes complain about it — has been an incredible tool to reach and help people no matter where they are.
Yitzi: OK, well, Nancy, thank you so much for your time and for interviewing with me. I look forward to sharing your story and this incredible vision with our readers.
Nancy: Thank you. It was truly a pleasure to be with you today. I really appreciate it.
Marriage Education: Nancy Landrum’s Big Idea That Might Change The World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.