At 90 years old, Alan Alda is still doing what he’s always done best: saying the quiet part out loud and making you laugh about it.
The beloved M*A*S*H star appeared at the “Alan Alda, Joy Behar, and Roger Rosenblatt in Conversation: More Rules for Aging” event at 92NY in New York City on May 21, where he got candid about the conversations he and his wife of nearly 70 years, Arlene Alda, have regularly — including openly discussing what life would look like if the other one died first.
“One time, we picked Carl Reiner up to take him someplace to dinner, and as we were driving, Carl’s wife had just died, and we told him how Arlene and I talk all the time about what we’d do about who died first,” Alda shared, according to People Magazine. “If I died first, what would her life be like? If she died first, what would I do? And just around then, I drove over the divider of Sunset Boulevard. A little bit of sidewalk. Just bounced away. And Carl said, ‘You know the way you drive, you don’t have to worry.'”
Deathcare professionals know better than almost anyone that the conversation about death is one most people avoid at all costs. But when a figure as universally loved as Alan Alda — someone who spent years as Hawkeye Pierce, using humor to process the horrors of war — sits on a stage and says he and his wife talk about death all the time, it sends a message that reaches people deathcare professionals never could on their own.
Alda has been navigating Parkinson’s disease since his 2015 diagnosis, but his outlook remains remarkably grounded. “My life hasn’t changed much,” he has said. “I just applied my curiosity to it.” And when it comes to his marriage, he’s equally disarming: “We still experience a kind of puppy love. I really have never made plans for the future. My life is more of an improvisation.”
Alda’s openness about discussing death with his wife taps into a broader cultural shift toward confronting mortality with honesty rather than avoidance. The cultural needle is moving — slowly, but it’s moving. And every time a headline like this one surfaces, it moves a little further.
