A routine genetic evaluation of dairy bulls based on the length of productive live (LPL) of their daughters corrected for milk production was developed in France in 1997. Initially, only the functional longevity (FL) breeding values of males were available. The FL genetic evaluation was then progressively improved by accounting for time-dependent changes in environmental factors and by computing approximate FL evaluations for cows. It was also found during the following decade that there were routinely collected traits related to fertility, conformation or udder health which could serve as predictors of FL, using an approximate multiple trait approach. Combining these direct and indirect sources of information led to more robust FL genetic evaluations of bulls and cows. With strong selection on production, the economic importance of functional traits such as FL and its predictors gradually increased. At the same time, genomic evaluations and selection became central. However, genomic evaluations of low heritability traits such as FL were usually characterized by poor reliabilities. We propose a ‘combined’ Single-Step (CSS) approach to obtain genomic evaluations (GEBV) of FL mimicking multiple-trait evaluations. This is illustrated in the context of the Montbéliarde breed, using or not information from predictor traits. Survival curves of a complete cohort of cows born in 2014-2015 were calculated, showing a large superiority of the CSS evaluation: among genotyped cows, 50% of the best 10% cows with the univariate SS reach a productive life of about 1,400 days, i.e. 402 days more than the worst 10% cows. This difference reaches 501 days with the CSS evaluation. The corresponding figures for ungenotyped animals are substantially smaller (187 vs 258 days). In other terms, CSS evaluations allow farmers to detect at birth the genotyped heifers that are more likely to have a long productive life in their herd. In contrast, CSS evaluations of males are much less pertinent to select young bulls, because selection intensity of males is much higher in selection programs.