Judge Judy: Yes on Gay Marriage
Judy Sheindlin is the second-highest paid woman in television, right behind Oprah. Judge Judy is now in its 13th season, and according to Variety , the extension of the show through the 2011-12 season guaranteed the judge an annual salary of $38 million. Since Sheindlin works only 50 days each year, this breaks down to a gross income of $760,000 for each day she spends in the studio. Not bad for a woman who labored over 25 years as a judge in the family courts of Manhattan.
Understandably, Sheindlin is a happy woman, and it shows in her voice. Speaking from her winter home in Naples, Florida, she exudes a genial confidence, intelligence, and maturity. There are no audible traces of the hostile aggression she frequently directs toward litigants who appear before her on Judge Judy. Of all the questions I would like to ask Sheindlin, I find myself strangely obsessed with a bit of fashion trivia. With advance apologies, I begin.
"I have to know: what’s the story behind that little lace collar attached to your judicial robes?"
Sheindlin laughs. "When I was first appointed to the bench by Ed Koch in 1982, my husband and I took a vacation to Greece. At that time, we were both civil servants, and we went on one of those $399 for two weeks, airfare-and-breakfast ABC Tours. We found ourselves in a small restaurant at the foot of the Acropolis, and walking around the streets was a lady who was making lace collars. I hadn’t taken the bench yet, but I practiced in the family court for a long time, and it always irritated me that male judges could wear these bright-colored ties that stuck out of their robes - you know, blue shirts, white shirts, with red or yellow ties - and the women had nothing but black against their faces. So I said, ’You know what, I’m going to buy one of these lace collars and see if I can get away with tacking it onto my robe to give it a bit of a look.’ That’s how it started, and it’s been with me for 27 years."
Sheindlin and her husband, retired New York judge Jerry Sheindlin, have been married for 31 years, and have five children and 11 grandchildren between them. They divide their time between homes in Naples, Florida and Greenwich, Connecticut. Their marriage was interrupted by divorce when Judy Sheindlin’s father died and she found herself unable to cope with the loss. But within a year, the couple remarried. But the second time around, Judge Judy insisted on changing the marriage vows. Instead of promising to marry "for better or worse," she insisted they re-marry "for better or forget it."
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