The late Phil Donahue and Princess Diana once shared a special moment together.

In an interview with moderator Andy Cohen on See what’s happening live In 2020, Donahue – who died on August 18 at the age of 88 after a “long illness” – sat down with his wife, Marlo Thomas, and played a game about celebrities he had met. In the process, Donahue recounted an unforgettable night he once spent with Princess Diana.

“I danced with her,” he revealed, before joking, “I had to fight off all the guys who tried to push in front of me!”

Thomas explained that in 1997, she was speaking at a charity dinner in Chicago when her husband, a talk show host, asked her if she would do him a favor.

“They said, ‘We need a man to dance with Princess Diana and there are three rules,'” she recalled. “‘A: He has to be married, B: She has to be in the room, the woman has to be in the room, and C: He has to be at least six feet tall, so we would like Phil to be that person.’ So I told Phil and he said, ‘Oh, I don’t want that,’ because Phil is very shy, people don’t notice. But he does.”

She continued: “He had his first dance with Princess Diana at the party and they got on brilliantly. They chatted while dancing. I was very impressed.”

Later appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show, Donahue noted that “never have so many photos been taken of me” as that evening.

The couple also said they kept the photos from the dance, which show Diana in a floor-length purple dress and Donahue in a tuxedo with a bow tie.

“My dance partner,” Donahue called her.

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Donahue died on Sunday, August 18, his family said the next day in a statement first sent to Today. They said Thomas, to whom he was married for 44 years, was by his side, along with “his sister, children, grandchildren and his beloved golden retriever Charlie.”

The 20-time Emmy winner paved the way for future talk show hosts such as Geraldo Rivera, Sally Jessy Raphael, Ricki Lake, Montel Williams and Oprah Winfrey – some of whom posted loving tributes to Donahue following news of his death.

“There would have been no The Oprah Show without Phil Donahue being the first to prove that daytime talk shows and women’s television should be taken seriously,” Winfrey wrote in an Instagram post. “He was a pioneer. I’m glad I could thank him for that. Rest in peace, Phil 🙏🏽🕊️.”

Raphael expressed a similar sentiment, writing, “His show changed the way we talked, what we talked about, and gave everyone a voice. If it weren’t for Phil Donahue, there would never have been Sally Jessy Raphael. Quite simply, Phil was a legend and his passing is a great loss to the world. My thoughts and prayers are with Marlo and her family.”