A Palm Springs, California, listener was taught that when the word the is followed by a vowel, it should be pronounced with a long e, and otherwise with a schwa sound. However, there’s no grammatical basis for such a rule. This is part of a complete episode.
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I was taught ‘the’ with a schwa as the one under current discussion, while the the “long e” (actually a dotted i…) variant indicated emphasis on status as either the sole example (i.e. one and only… “The Holy See” ði ?ho?li si) or most important example (e.g. “The Book” ði b?k, meaning The Bible)