Jerry Springer Producers Were ‘Petrified to Pitch’ Man Who Left His Family to Marry a Shetland Pony: ‘Train Wreck’

The Jerry Springer Show had many shocking guests throughout its 27-season run, but one of them really stands out in the minds of those who worked behind the scenes.

Producer Toby Yoshimura recalls an unforgettable phone call from a viewer that led to an episode so scandalous, it would only air a single time, in a single market. Yoshimura is one of several staffers on the talk show who appears in the new Netflix documentary Jerry Spring: Fights, Camera, Action.

“It had to be 3 or 4 in the morning when I get a call from this guy. He says, ‘Hi my name is Mark… I’ve been meaning to call the show for a long time because you guys are the only people who would really understand me. I left my wife and my two daughters for a Shetland pony,’ ” Yoshimura recalls in the documentary.

“I’m like, ‘This is a f–king dream,’ ” Yoshimura continues, “He said that he and [his pony] Pixel had looked at each other and they had an immediate connection.”

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Despite being “petrified to pitch it,” the executive producers were excited by the prospect of having the Shetland pony and his husband on the show. The team worked extra hard to keep that reveal under wraps, up until the day the episode was filmed. “I Married a Horse” aired on May 22, 1998.

“There was this weird buzz in the studio where nobody could talk about it. We were all sworn to silence because we had to make it a surprise,” Yoshimura recalls.

“You watch the cutaways to the audience and they’re just like [shocked]. It was so shocking no one could speak.”

Chicago Sun-Times media critic Robert Feder found the display horrific. “To have a guy on that married a horse, that was kissing a horse on stage, this was the most vile, grotesque freak show on television,” he said of the episode.

Executive producer Robert Dominick disagreed. In the documentary, he calls it “the perfect show,” and notes, “It was everything I ever wanted it to be.”

The episode aired in the New York City metro area before being pulled by other networks and markets for “glorifying bestiality.”

Producer Melinda Chait Mele adds, “The fact that it got banned, that it hit every major newspaper in the country that The Jerry Springer Show had done this show, even if it didn’t air… People were so curious about it — disgusted, but drawn. It’s the train wreck you can’t rip your eyes off of.”

Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action is now streaming on Netflix.