The Mr. & Mrs. Happy Handbook

Everything I Know About Love and Marriage (with corrections by Mrs. Doocy)

Ever since Eve asked Adam, "Do I look fat in this fig leaf?" it has been apparent that husbands don't know how to relate to their wives. Men believe they understand women and vice versa, but really men know as much about women as a cocker spaniel knows about assembling a Weber grill.

Welcome to The Mr. & Mrs. Happy Handbook, Steve Doocy's laugh-out-loud perspective on love, marriage, and family. The book can be used for its hilarious husband and wife wisdom or, if things aren't going well, as a projectile to get somebody's attention. This is not an advice book. It is a don't even think of trying this book. The author, his family, and his collection of friends (some very famous in the worlds of entertainment, business, and politics) have already discreetly made almost every conceivable marriage mistake, and it is their hope that this irrev- erent manual can save you the trouble of being an idiot on your own.

Doocy, co-host of Fox & Friends, who has been married for twenty consecutive years, provides real slice-of-life stories on everything from early marriage ("I love you, you're perfect, now wear this thong") and pregnancy ("You're eating for two? Who— you and Shaquille O'Neal?") to sending your child to college ("Is that a funnel?") and retirement (high-fiber appetizers on Viagra dates). Most of the stories conclude with "corrections" and additional wise words from Doocy's real-life wife, Kathy, who, after two decades of picking up Steve's socks in the garage, has developed a zany sense of humor herself.

There is also a handy troubleshooting section for when things go haywire, like during the eye- opening experiment undertaken especially for this book, wherein the author wanted to prove to his wife that they were perfect for each other, so he had them join an on-line dating service. Out of a database of several hundred thousand guys, he was not in her top 532 local men. Despite the fact that their one- month experiment ended a year ago, she's still getting photographs of single men whose head shots appear to have been taken at a recent skinhead convention. Luckily for him, she still prefers "bonehead to skinhead."

This book is a celebration of the pageantry that is wedlock, which starts with an "I do" and sometimes ends with a boiled rabbit. Let's face it, marriage isn't always as smooth as a forty-year-old's forehead after six months of Botox. In fact, marriage is ridiculously hard, but laughing about it is now incredibly easy with The Mr. & Mrs. Happy Handbook.