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" &amp;quot;Much as I love my job, first and foremost, I am a husband and a dad,&amp;quot; says Howie Mandel, host of two versions of Deal or No Deal \u2014 one in prime time on NBC, and a half-hour syndicated version every day \u2014 plus his new hidden-camera prank show, Howie Do It. &amp;quot;So meeting people, learning about their hopes and dreams, and then seeing those dreams come true is amazing.&amp;quot; The 52-year-old father of three (daughters Jackie, 24, and Riley, 16, and son Alex, 19) has been married for 30 years to Terry Soil. He says his greatest success is his family \u2014 and staying out of the way when anything at all needs to be done around the house. I knew I wanted to marry my wife when...she made me laugh. It was wonderful to meet a witty woman. The biggest void that people can have in their lives is a sense of humor. Spending your life with someone who doesn&amp;#039;t have that wouldn&amp;#039;t be palatable.  Our favorite date night is...seven nights a week. My wife doesn&amp;#039;t cook, so we eat out every night. It&amp;#039;s not fine dining or anything \u2014 we&amp;#039;re not fancy people. Last night, we went to Johnny Rockets. We go to a lot of delis. But every night feels like a date. We see a lot of movies. But we don&amp;#039;t plan a Saturday night out. My handyman style at home is DIY or Dial-the-Phone...neither. Dial-the-Phone implies that I would actually go to the phone. This is going to come off terribly, but I do nothing around the house. It&amp;#039;s not for lack of volunteering or even being there, it&amp;#039;s just that I&amp;#039;d get in the way. I&amp;#039;m mostly inept. My favorite daily activity is...to sit at a coffee shop and eavesdrop. You get a sense of what people find funny. The one thing my wife and I will never agree on about the house is...what color something should be. She&amp;#039;ll never do anything in the house without asking me, but I&amp;#039;m color-blind, so when I make a choice, I&amp;#039;m told that it clashes. So then I say, &amp;quot;Then why did you ask me? I&amp;#039;m color-blind.&amp;quot; To which she says, &amp;quot;Because I want you to be involved.&amp;quot;  Our favorite family tradition is...any time we can get the five of us together for dinner. I love sitting with three young adults carrying on a real conversation.  Our best parenting strategy is...to be a united front. You can&amp;#039;t be the dad who takes your kid out after your wife has said, &amp;quot;No ice cream,&amp;quot; buys the ice cream, and says, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t tell your mother.&amp;quot; You teach the child to lie \u2014 and to disrespect the other parent. We learned early on that we needed to be united, even if we disagreed, and to have that conversation out of earshot of the kids.  The best thing I taught my kids is...that they should do what they are passionate about. I came from Canada, chased an opportunity, and we are living in California, and I make my living making people laugh all day. And one of my kids is a teacher, one&amp;#039;s an actor, and the other, well, she&amp;#039;s 16, and she&amp;#039;ll be whatever she wants to be. And the best thing I did was not get in the way. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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