About Ron Deal

Ron Deal is husband to Nan (since 1986) and proud father of Braden, Connor, and Brennan. Everything else is just details.

Ron is a marriage and family author, speaker, and therapist. He is Founder and President of As For Me And My House Ministries, LLC (the parent ministry of Smart Stepfamilies) and Director of Blended Family Ministries for FamilyLife (for more visit www.RonDeal.org and www.FamilyLife.com).

Ron is author of the bestselling book The Smart Stepfamily: Seven Steps to a Healthy Family (and DVD series), The Smart Stepdad, Dating and the Single Parent, The Smart Stepmom (with Laura Petherbridge), and The Remarriage Checkup: Tools to Help Your Marriage Last a Lifetime (with Dr. David Olson. A recognized expert in marriage and blended families, Ron is a member of the Stepfamily Expert Council for the National Stepfamily Resource Center, and is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Licensed Professional Counselor with nearly 25 years experience in local church ministry and family ministry consulting. He is a featured expert on the video curriculum Single and Parenting (2011, Church Initiative).

Ron served as a member of the Couple Checkup Research Team (headed by Dr. David Olson, PREPARE-ENRICH) which conducted the two largest studies of marital strength ever accomplished. They surveyed over 100,000 marriages and remarriages (over 200,000 people) and examined the qualitative differences between highly satisfied marriages and low-quality marriages. The results of their groundbreaking research for couples are published in the books The Couple Checkup (Olson, Larson, & Olson-Sigg, 2008) and The Remarriage Checkup (Deal & Olson, 2010), and are featured in Ron’s newest seminar for dating, engaged, married, and remarried couples the Couple Checkup Conference.

Ron is a popular conference speaker and has appeared in dozens of national radio and TV broadcasts both in the US and Canada. He has appeared on Fox News, MSNBC, ABC Nightline, WGN-News, The Mike Huckabee Show, FamilyLife Today, Focus on the Family, HomeWord with Jim Burns, Celebration, and The 700 Club, and his work has been referenced online (e.g., ABC News.com) and in newspapers throughout the world (e.g., New York Daily News). The May 2012 issue of Ladies' Home Journal featured Ron's therapy work with a blended family couple in their popular feature column Can This Marriage Be Saved? Ron has written feature family articles addressing a variety of family matters for a number of publications and online magazines including Focus on the Family magazine, ParentLife, The Family Room, Gospel Today, and Christianity Today. He also writes a monthly feature article in HomeLife magazine and is an expert “Love Guru” for Love Is.com. On a regular basis Ron trains therapists, marriage educators, and ministry professionals at conferences around the country and has spoken at the National Stepfamily Conference, and the Utah and Arkansas Governors' conferences on the family.

Ron and Nan have three boys. Their middle son Connor died unexpectedly in February, 2009 at the age of 12. In his memory, the Deal's have partnered with Touch a Life Foundation to rescue children in Ghana, West Africa from slave trafficking. They would be honored if you help them sing Connor's song. Visit Connor's Song to learn more about this ministry and hear Connor sing.