"Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can and surely will at times fail. Other vulnerabilities, like being embarrassed or risking love, can be terrifying, too. I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk.""As a celebrity, you get a certain number of free passes. You're actually in a better position if you're a celebrity because people care.""Being taken for granted can be a compliment. It means that you've become a comfortable, trusted element in another person's life.""Credit buying is much like being drunk. The buzz happens immediately and gives you a lift... The hangover comes the day after.""For men to be virgins, we think it's negative. We think that there's something wrong with them.""I don't give advice. I can't tell anybody what to do. Instead I say this is what we know about this problem at this time. And here are the consequences of these actions.""If Shakespeare had to go on an author tour to promote Romeo and Juliet, he never would have written Macbeth.""Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.""Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable.""Marriage is not just spiritual communion, it is also remembering to take out the trash.""No matter how love-sick a woman is, she shouldn't take the first pill that comes along.""The best proof of love is trust.""The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.""The world at large does not judge us by who we are and what we know; it judges us by what we have.""There is such a thing as bad publicity.""Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.""Virginity is such a personal thing. You can't judge anyone on it. A lot of young women feel they want to save themselves for the man who they think they'll love forever."
Personal life
Brothers was born Joyce Diane Bauer in New York City, New York, the daughter of Estelle (née Rapaport) and Morris K. Bauer, both of whom were attorneys and had a law practice together. Joyce Brothers Biography (1927-) Her family is Jewish. Joyce Brothers Brothers graduated from Far Rockaway High School in Far Rockaway, Queens in 1943. She earned her Ph.D. degree in psychology from Columbia University after completing her undergraduate work at Cornell University. She married Dr. Milton Brothers, an internist, in 1949, and they had a daughter, Lisa. Milton Brothers died of cancer in 1989. Joyce Brothers is a resident of Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Career
Brothers gained fame in late 1955 by winning The $64,000 Question game show, on which she appeared as an expert in the subject area of boxing. Originally, she had not planned to have boxing as her topic, but the sponsors suggested it, and she agreed. A voracious reader, she studied every reference book about boxing that she could find; she would later tell reporters that it was thanks to her good memory that she assimilated so much material and answered even the most difficult questions. In 1959, allegations that the quiz shows were rigged began to surface and stirred controversy. Despite these claims, Brothers insisted that she had never cheated, nor had she ever been given any answers to questions in advance. Subsequent investigations verified her assertions that she had won honestly. Her success on "The $64,000 Question" earned Brothers a chance to be the color commentator for CBS during the boxing match between Carmen Basilio and Sugar Ray Robinson. She was said to be the first woman to ever be a boxing commentator.
By August 1958, she was given her own TV show on a New York station, but her topic was not sports; she began doing an advice show about relationships, during which she answered questions from the audience. She would later claim that she had been the first television psychologist, explaining to the Washington Post that "...I invented media psychology. I was the first. The founding mother." She went on to explain how what she did on TV was unique for its time. The '50s were a very conservative era, and she was answering questions from viewers about subjects that were still considered taboo, such as impotence or menopause. Sponsors were nervous about whether a TV psychologist could succeed, she recalled, but viewers expressed their gratitude for her show, telling her she was giving them information they couldn't get elsewhere. She went on to do syndicated advice shows on both TV and radio, during a broadcasting career that has lasted more than four decades. Her shows went through a number of name changes over the years, from "The Dr. Joyce Brothers Show" to "Consult Dr. Brothers" to "Tell Me, Dr. Brothers" to "Ask Dr. Brothers" to "Living Easy with Dr. Joyce Brothers." But by whatever name, her audience found her a valuable resource, and she became an iconic figure, the TV psychologist whose name everyone seemed to know.
In addition to her radio and TV work, Brothers is also a prolific writer. She had a monthly column in Good Housekeeping magazine for almost four decades, and a syndicated newspaper column that she began writing in the 1970s, and which at its height was printed in more than 300 newspapers. She has published several best-selling books, including the 1982 "What Every Woman Should Know About Men," and a 1992 book called "Widowed," inspired by the loss of her husband; the book offered practical advice for widows and widowers, helping them to cope with their grief and create a new life for themselves. Today, Brothers continues to do guest appearances on television and radio talk shows.
In addition to being called upon for her expertise in psychology, she also has done comedic cameo appearances, including on such TV shows as Ellery Queen, Mama's Family, Taxi, Happy Days, Police Squad, From the Files of Police Squad!, Entourage, Police Woman, Night Court, The Nanny, Frasier, The Andy Dick Show, The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, One Life to Live, WKRP in Cincinnati, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Mr. Belvedere, Married... with Children, Entourage, The Simpsons, All That, Kenan & Kel, The Steve Harvey Show, Melrose Place, The Lonely Guy, Alf, Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. She has also appeared as an occasional celebrity guest on game shows such as Match Game, the 1968 revival of What's My Line?, The Gong Show and Hollywood Squares. She also appeared in a Sunday strip of the comic strip Blondie, where she was referred to by Dagwood Bumstead as "Brother Joyce Doctors". Brothers was the ninth most frequent guest on the Tonight Show when Carson retired. An often-replayed blooper from Brothers' Happy Days appearance features her giving a complicated psychological analysis of a dog, only to spark laughter when she accidentally refers to the dog's homosexual behaviour.
As a psychologist, Brothers has been licensed in New York since 1958. In June, 2010, Brothers was still appearing on television; currently in commercials endorsing a home alert monitor.
