For the remainder of his career, he played Tom Horton on Days of our Lives, from 1965 until his death from lung cancer in Beverly Hills, California in 1994. During this time, Carey suffered from a drinking problem, and eventually joined Alcoholics Anonymous in 1982. A longtime pipe smoker, he was seen in many films and early episodes of Days of our Lives with it. He was ordered by his doctor to quit in September 1991 after having to take a leave of absence from Days in order to remove a cancerous tumor from one of his lungs. He returned to the show in November of that year.
He is most recognized today as the voice who recites the epigraph each day before the program begins: "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of our Lives". From 1966 to 1994, he would also intone, "This is Macdonald Carey, and these are the Days of our Lives." (After Carey's passing, the producers, out of respect for Carey's family, decided not to use the second part of the opening tagline.) At each intermission, his voice also says "We will return for the second half of Days of our Lives in just a moment". Since the Horton family is still regarded as the core of Days of our Lives, his memory has been allowed to remain imprinted on the show by leaving the voice-overs intact. He also served as voice-over for the very first PBS ident, in which he said "This is PBS ... the Public Broadcasting Service."
Macdonald Carey wrote several books of poetry and a 1991 autobiography, The Days of My Life. For his contribution to television, Carey has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6536 Hollywood Boulevard.
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