May 24, 2021 • 24 mins
She’s a nonstop dynamo, he’s a mensch, and they’ve been married not once but twice — to each other! With a year apart, and many lessons learned, Judy and Jerry figured out how not to let their Judge-iness get in the way of marital bliss.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushin. Hi. I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlowe Thomas, and
we're going on a series of double dates to find
out what makes a marriage. Last one of the couples
(00:39):
we reached out to was Judge Judith Shinlin, known to
the world as Judge Judy, and her husband Jerry Shinedlin.
He's a former New York Supreme Court judge. That was
a surprise. Two judges in one marriage. What would that
be like? Judy said, Jerry, go and take out the garbage.
And I looked at her and I said, do you
(01:02):
realize that you're speaking to a Supreme Court judge? And
she looked at me and she said, put on your
robe and take out the garbage. The other surprise was
their house. Well, let's just say it was not what
we expected. When we got there. We had to double
check the address. Wow, it was a palace and she
(01:24):
designed it patio. Do you do a lot of parties
out here? We do? And you've also done two of
weddings here, right, we've done two weddings here. We did
three weddings here. Two asked it. Judy brought out a
big tray of snacks, quick to point out that she
didn't make them herself, and then we settled down to talk.
(01:48):
How old were you when you first saw him up
with him? I was thirty two, thirty two. What was
it that you glommed onto right away? He had shiny shoes.
I saw him in a bar and I looked at
him and he had a face. I had just finished
successfully trying a murder case as a defense attorney. Wow.
And it was in the newspaper, or so. Mike Pearl
(02:10):
from the New York Post, who was the crime reporter,
was interviewing me and she came walking into the bar
seeing me surrounded by these lawyers, one of whom was
her boss, and came right up to me in the
middle of the interview, put her finger in my face
and said, and who is this in the middle of
(02:32):
the interview? Why did you do that? I thought he
was adorable. She wanted to make an impression what she did,
and I said, lady, please get your finger out of
my face on the middle of an interview, and she did,
and we went out for dinner that night, and we
saw each other every single night thereafter. So that's how
to get to you, huh, I'm telling put your finger
on my face. I'm easy. I actually had to drag
(02:57):
him to the altar. Yeah I did. I did. He
really had no intention of getting married. He had no
intention of divorcing. He and his former wife were separated
for about three or four years, but he had no
one tension of divorcing was a very good thing. He
could come out, He could get laid. He could say
I can't get serious because I'm married. I said, after
(03:19):
a year, I want to see the divorce in the paper,
or don't call me anymore. No. Well, one of the
things you said was I said to her, why do
we need a paper from the government in order for
us to be together. It's not necessary. Let's live together.
(03:40):
She said, okay, you go ahead and ask my father
if we could live together. I said, I'm not going
to do that. So she took out her calendar and
she said pick a date. So how did two judges
not become very judgmental to each other? And who takes
and Alsie was a great at pleading your case. I
(04:03):
am terrific at pleading my case. However, I'm constantly being
overruled forgell But seriously, as a bad comedian would say, yeah,
we judge each other all the time, and I plead
my case and he pleads his case. That's what we do,
that's what you really Of course, I use my logic
(04:25):
to explain why I don't want to live in Connecticut anymore,
or why I want to go to sicilianification when you
have to talk your husband, your mate into doing it,
into thinking that his idea, and also when you're having
an argument, each of you has to say, well, why
this wasn't fair to this one or that one. I
just think it's fascinating. We tend to do the right thing,
(04:50):
and as soon as one of us gets to the
point where we say, you know that's right, then we're together.
And if we can't get to that point, then we argue,
and we argue until somebody gives up. And it's usually me.
That's true, because that's a reason. The truth is, I'm
(05:13):
a very linear thinker. Things illogical if something doesn't make sense,
whether it's an argument between us or in life, if
something is inconsistent with my history from seeing people, from
being a lawyer and a judge for fifty years. If
something doesn't make sense to me, it's usually not true,
(05:35):
or it's usually not right or it's not going to
end up well. Jerry is a linear thinker, but at
the end of that thought process is what will make
him happy. Yeah, and I have to linear think through Jerry.
That may make you happy, but it's not the right
(05:58):
thing to do, and sometimes we don't get there, so
then we just have a blowout. Are you ever wrong? Rarely?
I remember once once you was twelve years old, she
said she's wrong? Am I ever wrong? Oh? I'm sure
(06:22):
that's really We have a big family and there so
there's lots to negotiate it so time coordination things. That's
not something that I don't know what Phil is good at,
but Jerry is really not good at that. Would that
be fairtakeing? I think? So? Now tell me Jerry. Yes,
(06:44):
Judy has told us what she's you know, her part
that she's good at making the arrangements and stuff. So
what's your job? My job is to make suggestions to
her and then she takes the suggestions and makes arrangements
and she does the appointments. So as he's saying that lightheartedly,
but my job is usually to go along with what
(07:08):
she says and she accepts your suggestions. No, that's an
idea that's a good idea, that's a glimmer of an idea,
that's an her Yeah, but it works, that's the thing.
It works. It works when you have a blow up.
(07:30):
Which one is more likely to be the peacemaker. That
has fluctuated over the years. I would say the first
twenties or more years, I was the peacemaker, because that's
just the way it was. I think Jerry will acknowledge
(07:51):
he was a difficult person for a while, and what
was it was difficulty more unreasonable. I wouldn't listen necessarily
to what she was saying when I would assist that
what I was saying was correct and right and it
was the thing to do. And as years went on,
(08:13):
it just came to me that she has the better
ideas most often, and I accepted and I don't struggle
with it. And that became more as the marriage went on.
As the marriage went on, that became more frequent, and
so we get along better. I think Jerry brought more
baggage to the marriage than I did. His family. His
(08:38):
parents were more dysfunctional than mine. What happened to them
was when they were born in Europe, if they didn't
behave they would beat the children. Oh that's the way
they did it. Yeah, it's not a surprise at all.
So when they came to this country, they thought the
way to bring up children is to abuse them, to
(09:01):
hurt them, to hit them, not understanding that that carries
a terrible, terrible result with the child. It's hard to
get over. I carried around a lot of garbage from
the time that I was a kid, like what couldn't
you do? Well? It was hard to get close to
another person without thinking that perhaps they're gonna hurt you,
(09:25):
because that's the way you grew up. So you know,
you had to continually test to see if the person
really loved you. Would you love me if I said
this to you? Would you love me if I did
this to you? So? What kind of a father does
that make you? Did you hit your children? Never ever
(09:47):
laid a hand on them. I learned it from a
negative point of view. A negative upbringing actually gave me
a positive sense of how to bring up children. When
I was seventeen, I joined the Navy. Oh I don't
blame during the war and spent two years in the Navy.
Then when I came out, my head was better. You know,
(10:08):
they say you're going to the Navy as a boy
and you come out as a man. Well, in my case,
that happen to be true. And did you go to
law school afterwards? Went to college afterward? Then you have
a short relatively twelvey, a short term marriage which Jerry had,
which produced three children, three terrific kids. And I think
(10:29):
he had a lot of guilt with regard to leaving
his wife and children that was long before he met me.
All of that was a lot of baggage to come
to a new relationship with. And let me put it
to you this way, honestly, because you want honesty in
your chapter, correct, you would like I am a girl
(10:52):
who always needs a project. With Jerry, I knew I
was getting a project. I knew it wasn't going to
be an easy So the first twenty years I was
really trying to make up for all of this. You
had a miserable childhood, You feel guilty about leaving your kids.
There was lots of turmoil that he probably couldn't pinpoint
(11:16):
in his brain, but he knew it was not making
him feel content. And it was my job, I felt
during that time to make it better. Well, then what
happened was that my father died and my father was
my champion ahead one of those right, I know you did.
And when you lose that, you say, all right, somebody
(11:38):
has to take care of me. I've been taking care
of you for twenty years. Now you take care of me.
This is what I need. And if you can't do that,
we just can't be together. And he was totally on
the custom. It's too amorphic. You can't say take care
of me? What does that mean? I mean, how do
you want me to take care of you? Do you
want me to carry you from place to place? Do
(11:59):
you want me to buy you things? Do you want
me to feed you? Do you want me to keep
you warm? What you have to do is tell me,
use your words, tell me what you want me to
do to take care of you. Right? And she said,
just take care of me. I said, I don't know
how to do that. And honestly, it wasn't that he
(12:21):
was being stubborn. I don't think he was being stubborn.
I think that honestly, he didn't think that I would
do it. No, I didn't. He didn't think that I
would do it. She said to me, if you can't
new with this, I'm going to divorce you, and I said,
oh yeah, I dare you. And the next day I
(12:41):
got divorce papers. Right, I mean, it's seriously, he really
didn't think I would do it. I had a friend.
I said, just serving with the papers. We'll have more
after a quick break. We're back with Judge Judy and
(13:06):
Jerry Shinedlin. When we left off, they were remembering a
tough time in nineteen ninety when Yep, Judy actually followed
through with her threat they got divorced. I missed her
her presence the first week that we was oparated, because
we didn't see each other for the first time in years.
(13:27):
Every single day I was in the Supreme Court, Judy
was in the Family Court. We'd always be together after court, always,
and this was a strange experience for me not seeing Judy.
Were you in the same building, same building? Were in
the same building. So there came a point where I
called her on the phone. I said, what are you doing?
(13:48):
You want to go to dinner? And she would say yes,
which surprised me. But we went to dinner. Meanwhile, the
papers were all signed. Did you need to get to
the point to give her what she wanted? What happened
was we'd gradually, during this period of one year, grew
closer together because I missed her terribly and I couldn't
(14:12):
stand the fact that somebody fixed her up with the
guy that was driving me crazy. So I would call
her up and say, did he kiss you? He said no,
and she and she said it didn't even work well
because we went to this restaurant and the waiter came
over and he said, I'll have the roast beef and
(14:37):
the potatoes and the French fries, and I'd like a
big glass of cabernet. And she said to the waiter,
that's what he wants, what he's going to have. And
so this guy never saw her again. I was pleased
to hear that story because I knew eventually she had
(14:58):
to come back to me. That's a scream. And did
you miss him too? I missed it. I missed it.
I want to get back to when you got back together.
That's the most interesting thing, because you know one divorce,
I said, Okay, I was married to him. Now we
even see each other all the time, we'll have to
get married for again. Interestingly enough, we're walking downtown Manhattan.
(15:19):
I picked her up from work, and I said, you
know this is silly. I'm uncomfortable being with you all
the time and not being married to you. I said,
let's get married again. She said, well, I mean, how
are we going to do that? I said, my ex
law partner is a Supreme Court judge. He's right up
(15:40):
the street. We can go right into the clerk's office
and get a license. And of course, as soon as
they saw us, they accommodated us with both judges. Got
the license, immediately called up my law partner and said,
are you busy? Said no, I said, well, we're coming
up to get married again. I called my older son,
who had a law practice in law of Manhattan. He
(16:02):
was my best man. She called her girlfriend of forty
years that was her maid of honor. So we went
up to my partner's chambers and he performed the following ceremony.
To me, he said, you take this woman to be
your wolf, a wedded wife forever and good times and bad,
and sickness and health, and to each I said yes,
(16:25):
looked at her and said you take this man to
be your husband. She said yes, in good times or bad.
And she looked at him and said, in good times
or forget it. Herbie said, this is a real tear jerk.
Oh that's funny. She cracks a joke about it. But
(16:49):
I think it's romantic that they got remarried. They also
came back to each other already knowing what makes the
other one tick. Do you know the triggers that each
other has? Like you know the thing that will set
them up? And absolutely so you know what they are?
So yes, So what do you do? Do you like?
Avoid them? I avoid them? He sometimes? He sometimes still
(17:16):
he still tests. That's interesting. No, but really you try
to change, but you can't change. There's something that just damaged.
That's the way you put it, just damaged and you
can't repair it. Being damaged causing the testing of my
devotion to him. And it used to happen very often,
(17:38):
and it happens less frequently. Yes, we get old, you
know you asked about I think that we change in
what our needs are. For instance, you you were working
in Chicago. You got married in nineteen eighty, right, yes,
(17:58):
but your show was still in Chicago in nineteen eighty. Yes,
your show was in Chicago for another four years. Right?
Do my homework too? To the last kid got to
high school. That was our deal. Okay, but that's different,
and I'm sure that that was difficult, and I'm sure
that there were accommodations that had to be made, and yeah, scrabbled.
And that's why I'm so interested in accommodation, because I
(18:23):
think a marriage cannot be successful and be strong if
one person says it has to be this and it
has to be that. When we decided to get married,
and I had said, I'm not living in Winnetka, and
he said, I can't live in LA. So we made
New York home because it was closer to Chicago, and
he said, I just have got to get my boys
to high school. I got it. I didn't want to
(18:45):
be taken out of my freshman year or software year
in high school. So where did you live? I moved
from LA to New York. But the point is that
we made a life that neither of us ever lived here.
Now we have a New York apartment. None of this
was in Chicago or LA. We just made a new life.
And I really appreciate that about how we handled it.
He was willing to move his show, but not willing
(19:08):
to hurt his children, and I was not willing to
hurt his children. So we made a path for ourselves,
and the kids came to and we had four bedrooms,
and then they grew up, and then they come occasionally
and they come. Now, okay to exactly, but if people
don't accommodate each other, if you don't give up certain things,
or round off certain things, or just downright change something,
(19:33):
you two people aren't alike. They're not the same. I
am so not like him and he is so not
like me. It's true, we really are different. But the
important thing is we figured out that that's okay. Yeah,
we thought a lot at first, but it just takes time.
Every young couple goes through it. Young people aren't getting
(19:54):
married anymore. Nobody's getting married when they're twenty two or
twenty four or twenty six or twenty eight. They start
thinking about it when they're thirty. They hardly get out
of your house before they're thirty. That's just this generation healthier,
healthier than our generation. Yeah. I mean, if if a
(20:15):
daughter wasn't married by at times he was twenty four.
In the Catholic world, you know your mother went to church. Yes,
many of those marriages did not survive. Women. I think
more than men, when they enter into a relationship, think
(20:36):
that whatever behavior is annoying to them, they will be
able to modify and change in the other person. In
the other person. And if you marry somebody thinking that
you're going to change them, which I did, Mia Coppa,
don't try to teach a pig to sing. It doesn't
(20:57):
work and it annoys the pig. But what about the
fact that he did change? He didn't. He didn't change.
He learned to use a calendar better, he learned to
write down Octope but twenty first Judy's birthday. What is
difficult about living with you? Nothing, that's the difficult. That's
(21:20):
the difficulty because you must have had to change something
in you to be able to accommodate another person. Everybody does.
I did. I used to sweat the small stuff. I
had to give it up. During that year that we
weren't together, I did a little growing myself. It was
(21:41):
a realization that we were better as a couple than
we were separately. You have to have that feeling that
is intangible. My father said to me that he saw
my mother a dance at the Jewish Center for the
first time when she was eighteen and he was with
his best friend. From the first minute he looked at her,
(22:04):
he saw her and he said, I gotta have it.
I saw him and I said, I have to have
that like forever. Whatever it is, I'm going to make
this work. And he evidently the same thing. You evidently
the same thing Chicago, New York. I'm going to accommodate
it because there were a lot of girls in Chicago,
(22:27):
but you saw this one, this girl, and you really
had to have this girl. So whatever it had to
be in your your life, that's what you did that.
You can't identify it because the truth of the matter is,
no matter how you slice it, and no matter how
many words you use, it all is irrelevant unless when
(22:50):
you touch your mate, there's a special feeling. When you
speak to her, there's a special feeling. When you hugger,
there's a special feeling. I think the foundation of a
good marriage ones that last is a deep love and
a devotion to your mate. If you look at your
mate and you love her as we do, then it
(23:13):
all works, no matter little irritations. They fall into place,
but you can't replace the touch, the kiss, making love,
and the main thing is that she has a tremendous
ability to make me laugh. And there you have it.
(23:34):
What makes the marriage of Judge Judy and Jerry shinin
last This has been so much and you are the
nicest man that ever lived. Well, that's the problem with
this interview. That is the problem with this Somebody said
something nice to me. She can't until next time. I'm
filled down a he and I'm Marlow Thomas how't told
(23:57):
us how well? I'm telling you. He's different. He's selfish, Jerry,
but he's adorable. He is he is adorable. Suffer you
have to come to my rescue double Day. There's a
production of Pushkin Industries. The show was created by US
and produced by Sarah Lilly. Michael Bahari is associate producer.
(24:19):
Musical adaptations of It Had to Be You by Sellwagon, Simfinette,
Marlo and I are executive producers, along with Mia Lobell
and Letal Molad from Pushkin and special thanks to Jacob Weisberg,
Malcolm Gladwell, Heather Fain, John Snars, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler,
(24:43):
Emily Rostek, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams, and Bruce Kluger. If
you like our show, please remember to share, rate and
review Thanks for listening
Pushin. Hi. I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlowe Thomas, and
we're going on a series of double dates to find
out what makes a marriage. Last one of the couples
(00:39):
we reached out to was Judge Judith Shinlin, known to
the world as Judge Judy, and her husband Jerry Shinedlin.
He's a former New York Supreme Court judge. That was
a surprise. Two judges in one marriage. What would that
be like? Judy said, Jerry, go and take out the garbage.
And I looked at her and I said, do you
(01:02):
realize that you're speaking to a Supreme Court judge? And
she looked at me and she said, put on your
robe and take out the garbage. The other surprise was
their house. Well, let's just say it was not what
we expected. When we got there. We had to double
check the address. Wow, it was a palace and she
(01:24):
designed it patio. Do you do a lot of parties
out here? We do? And you've also done two of
weddings here, right, we've done two weddings here. We did
three weddings here. Two asked it. Judy brought out a
big tray of snacks, quick to point out that she
didn't make them herself, and then we settled down to talk.
(01:48):
How old were you when you first saw him up
with him? I was thirty two, thirty two. What was
it that you glommed onto right away? He had shiny shoes.
I saw him in a bar and I looked at
him and he had a face. I had just finished
successfully trying a murder case as a defense attorney. Wow.
And it was in the newspaper, or so. Mike Pearl
(02:10):
from the New York Post, who was the crime reporter,
was interviewing me and she came walking into the bar
seeing me surrounded by these lawyers, one of whom was
her boss, and came right up to me in the
middle of the interview, put her finger in my face
and said, and who is this in the middle of
(02:32):
the interview? Why did you do that? I thought he
was adorable. She wanted to make an impression what she did,
and I said, lady, please get your finger out of
my face on the middle of an interview, and she did,
and we went out for dinner that night, and we
saw each other every single night thereafter. So that's how
to get to you, huh, I'm telling put your finger
on my face. I'm easy. I actually had to drag
(02:57):
him to the altar. Yeah I did. I did. He
really had no intention of getting married. He had no
intention of divorcing. He and his former wife were separated
for about three or four years, but he had no
one tension of divorcing was a very good thing. He
could come out, He could get laid. He could say
I can't get serious because I'm married. I said, after
(03:19):
a year, I want to see the divorce in the paper,
or don't call me anymore. No. Well, one of the
things you said was I said to her, why do
we need a paper from the government in order for
us to be together. It's not necessary. Let's live together.
(03:40):
She said, okay, you go ahead and ask my father
if we could live together. I said, I'm not going
to do that. So she took out her calendar and
she said pick a date. So how did two judges
not become very judgmental to each other? And who takes
and Alsie was a great at pleading your case. I
(04:03):
am terrific at pleading my case. However, I'm constantly being
overruled forgell But seriously, as a bad comedian would say, yeah,
we judge each other all the time, and I plead
my case and he pleads his case. That's what we do,
that's what you really Of course, I use my logic
(04:25):
to explain why I don't want to live in Connecticut anymore,
or why I want to go to sicilianification when you
have to talk your husband, your mate into doing it,
into thinking that his idea, and also when you're having
an argument, each of you has to say, well, why
this wasn't fair to this one or that one. I
just think it's fascinating. We tend to do the right thing,
(04:50):
and as soon as one of us gets to the
point where we say, you know that's right, then we're together.
And if we can't get to that point, then we argue,
and we argue until somebody gives up. And it's usually me.
That's true, because that's a reason. The truth is, I'm
(05:13):
a very linear thinker. Things illogical if something doesn't make sense,
whether it's an argument between us or in life, if
something is inconsistent with my history from seeing people, from
being a lawyer and a judge for fifty years. If
something doesn't make sense to me, it's usually not true,
(05:35):
or it's usually not right or it's not going to
end up well. Jerry is a linear thinker, but at
the end of that thought process is what will make
him happy. Yeah, and I have to linear think through Jerry.
That may make you happy, but it's not the right
(05:58):
thing to do, and sometimes we don't get there, so
then we just have a blowout. Are you ever wrong? Rarely?
I remember once once you was twelve years old, she
said she's wrong? Am I ever wrong? Oh? I'm sure
(06:22):
that's really We have a big family and there so
there's lots to negotiate it so time coordination things. That's
not something that I don't know what Phil is good at,
but Jerry is really not good at that. Would that
be fairtakeing? I think? So? Now tell me Jerry. Yes,
(06:44):
Judy has told us what she's you know, her part
that she's good at making the arrangements and stuff. So
what's your job? My job is to make suggestions to
her and then she takes the suggestions and makes arrangements
and she does the appointments. So as he's saying that lightheartedly,
but my job is usually to go along with what
(07:08):
she says and she accepts your suggestions. No, that's an
idea that's a good idea, that's a glimmer of an idea,
that's an her Yeah, but it works, that's the thing.
It works. It works when you have a blow up.
(07:30):
Which one is more likely to be the peacemaker. That
has fluctuated over the years. I would say the first
twenties or more years, I was the peacemaker, because that's
just the way it was. I think Jerry will acknowledge
(07:51):
he was a difficult person for a while, and what
was it was difficulty more unreasonable. I wouldn't listen necessarily
to what she was saying when I would assist that
what I was saying was correct and right and it
was the thing to do. And as years went on,
(08:13):
it just came to me that she has the better
ideas most often, and I accepted and I don't struggle
with it. And that became more as the marriage went on.
As the marriage went on, that became more frequent, and
so we get along better. I think Jerry brought more
baggage to the marriage than I did. His family. His
(08:38):
parents were more dysfunctional than mine. What happened to them
was when they were born in Europe, if they didn't
behave they would beat the children. Oh that's the way
they did it. Yeah, it's not a surprise at all.
So when they came to this country, they thought the
way to bring up children is to abuse them, to
(09:01):
hurt them, to hit them, not understanding that that carries
a terrible, terrible result with the child. It's hard to
get over. I carried around a lot of garbage from
the time that I was a kid, like what couldn't
you do? Well? It was hard to get close to
another person without thinking that perhaps they're gonna hurt you,
(09:25):
because that's the way you grew up. So you know,
you had to continually test to see if the person
really loved you. Would you love me if I said
this to you? Would you love me if I did
this to you? So? What kind of a father does
that make you? Did you hit your children? Never ever
(09:47):
laid a hand on them. I learned it from a
negative point of view. A negative upbringing actually gave me
a positive sense of how to bring up children. When
I was seventeen, I joined the Navy. Oh I don't
blame during the war and spent two years in the Navy.
Then when I came out, my head was better. You know,
(10:08):
they say you're going to the Navy as a boy
and you come out as a man. Well, in my case,
that happen to be true. And did you go to
law school afterwards? Went to college afterward? Then you have
a short relatively twelvey, a short term marriage which Jerry had,
which produced three children, three terrific kids. And I think
(10:29):
he had a lot of guilt with regard to leaving
his wife and children that was long before he met me.
All of that was a lot of baggage to come
to a new relationship with. And let me put it
to you this way, honestly, because you want honesty in
your chapter, correct, you would like I am a girl
(10:52):
who always needs a project. With Jerry, I knew I
was getting a project. I knew it wasn't going to
be an easy So the first twenty years I was
really trying to make up for all of this. You
had a miserable childhood, You feel guilty about leaving your kids.
There was lots of turmoil that he probably couldn't pinpoint
(11:16):
in his brain, but he knew it was not making
him feel content. And it was my job, I felt
during that time to make it better. Well, then what
happened was that my father died and my father was
my champion ahead one of those right, I know you did.
And when you lose that, you say, all right, somebody
(11:38):
has to take care of me. I've been taking care
of you for twenty years. Now you take care of me.
This is what I need. And if you can't do that,
we just can't be together. And he was totally on
the custom. It's too amorphic. You can't say take care
of me? What does that mean? I mean, how do
you want me to take care of you? Do you
want me to carry you from place to place? Do
(11:59):
you want me to buy you things? Do you want
me to feed you? Do you want me to keep
you warm? What you have to do is tell me,
use your words, tell me what you want me to
do to take care of you. Right? And she said,
just take care of me. I said, I don't know
how to do that. And honestly, it wasn't that he
(12:21):
was being stubborn. I don't think he was being stubborn.
I think that honestly, he didn't think that I would
do it. No, I didn't. He didn't think that I
would do it. She said to me, if you can't
new with this, I'm going to divorce you, and I said,
oh yeah, I dare you. And the next day I
(12:41):
got divorce papers. Right, I mean, it's seriously, he really
didn't think I would do it. I had a friend.
I said, just serving with the papers. We'll have more
after a quick break. We're back with Judge Judy and
(13:06):
Jerry Shinedlin. When we left off, they were remembering a
tough time in nineteen ninety when Yep, Judy actually followed
through with her threat they got divorced. I missed her
her presence the first week that we was oparated, because
we didn't see each other for the first time in years.
(13:27):
Every single day I was in the Supreme Court, Judy
was in the Family Court. We'd always be together after court, always,
and this was a strange experience for me not seeing Judy.
Were you in the same building, same building? Were in
the same building. So there came a point where I
called her on the phone. I said, what are you doing?
(13:48):
You want to go to dinner? And she would say yes,
which surprised me. But we went to dinner. Meanwhile, the
papers were all signed. Did you need to get to
the point to give her what she wanted? What happened
was we'd gradually, during this period of one year, grew
closer together because I missed her terribly and I couldn't
(14:12):
stand the fact that somebody fixed her up with the
guy that was driving me crazy. So I would call
her up and say, did he kiss you? He said no,
and she and she said it didn't even work well
because we went to this restaurant and the waiter came
over and he said, I'll have the roast beef and
(14:37):
the potatoes and the French fries, and I'd like a
big glass of cabernet. And she said to the waiter,
that's what he wants, what he's going to have. And
so this guy never saw her again. I was pleased
to hear that story because I knew eventually she had
(14:58):
to come back to me. That's a scream. And did
you miss him too? I missed it. I missed it.
I want to get back to when you got back together.
That's the most interesting thing, because you know one divorce,
I said, Okay, I was married to him. Now we
even see each other all the time, we'll have to
get married for again. Interestingly enough, we're walking downtown Manhattan.
(15:19):
I picked her up from work, and I said, you
know this is silly. I'm uncomfortable being with you all
the time and not being married to you. I said,
let's get married again. She said, well, I mean, how
are we going to do that? I said, my ex
law partner is a Supreme Court judge. He's right up
(15:40):
the street. We can go right into the clerk's office
and get a license. And of course, as soon as
they saw us, they accommodated us with both judges. Got
the license, immediately called up my law partner and said,
are you busy? Said no, I said, well, we're coming
up to get married again. I called my older son,
who had a law practice in law of Manhattan. He
(16:02):
was my best man. She called her girlfriend of forty
years that was her maid of honor. So we went
up to my partner's chambers and he performed the following ceremony.
To me, he said, you take this woman to be
your wolf, a wedded wife forever and good times and bad,
and sickness and health, and to each I said yes,
(16:25):
looked at her and said you take this man to
be your husband. She said yes, in good times or bad.
And she looked at him and said, in good times
or forget it. Herbie said, this is a real tear jerk.
Oh that's funny. She cracks a joke about it. But
(16:49):
I think it's romantic that they got remarried. They also
came back to each other already knowing what makes the
other one tick. Do you know the triggers that each
other has? Like you know the thing that will set
them up? And absolutely so you know what they are?
So yes, So what do you do? Do you like?
Avoid them? I avoid them? He sometimes? He sometimes still
(17:16):
he still tests. That's interesting. No, but really you try
to change, but you can't change. There's something that just damaged.
That's the way you put it, just damaged and you
can't repair it. Being damaged causing the testing of my
devotion to him. And it used to happen very often,
(17:38):
and it happens less frequently. Yes, we get old, you
know you asked about I think that we change in
what our needs are. For instance, you you were working
in Chicago. You got married in nineteen eighty, right, yes,
(17:58):
but your show was still in Chicago in nineteen eighty. Yes,
your show was in Chicago for another four years. Right?
Do my homework too? To the last kid got to
high school. That was our deal. Okay, but that's different,
and I'm sure that that was difficult, and I'm sure
that there were accommodations that had to be made, and yeah, scrabbled.
And that's why I'm so interested in accommodation, because I
(18:23):
think a marriage cannot be successful and be strong if
one person says it has to be this and it
has to be that. When we decided to get married,
and I had said, I'm not living in Winnetka, and
he said, I can't live in LA. So we made
New York home because it was closer to Chicago, and
he said, I just have got to get my boys
to high school. I got it. I didn't want to
(18:45):
be taken out of my freshman year or software year
in high school. So where did you live? I moved
from LA to New York. But the point is that
we made a life that neither of us ever lived here.
Now we have a New York apartment. None of this
was in Chicago or LA. We just made a new life.
And I really appreciate that about how we handled it.
He was willing to move his show, but not willing
(19:08):
to hurt his children, and I was not willing to
hurt his children. So we made a path for ourselves,
and the kids came to and we had four bedrooms,
and then they grew up, and then they come occasionally
and they come. Now, okay to exactly, but if people
don't accommodate each other, if you don't give up certain things,
or round off certain things, or just downright change something,
(19:33):
you two people aren't alike. They're not the same. I
am so not like him and he is so not
like me. It's true, we really are different. But the
important thing is we figured out that that's okay. Yeah,
we thought a lot at first, but it just takes time.
Every young couple goes through it. Young people aren't getting
(19:54):
married anymore. Nobody's getting married when they're twenty two or
twenty four or twenty six or twenty eight. They start
thinking about it when they're thirty. They hardly get out
of your house before they're thirty. That's just this generation healthier,
healthier than our generation. Yeah. I mean, if if a
(20:15):
daughter wasn't married by at times he was twenty four.
In the Catholic world, you know your mother went to church. Yes,
many of those marriages did not survive. Women. I think
more than men, when they enter into a relationship, think
(20:36):
that whatever behavior is annoying to them, they will be
able to modify and change in the other person. In
the other person. And if you marry somebody thinking that
you're going to change them, which I did, Mia Coppa,
don't try to teach a pig to sing. It doesn't
(20:57):
work and it annoys the pig. But what about the
fact that he did change? He didn't. He didn't change.
He learned to use a calendar better, he learned to
write down Octope but twenty first Judy's birthday. What is
difficult about living with you? Nothing, that's the difficult. That's
(21:20):
the difficulty because you must have had to change something
in you to be able to accommodate another person. Everybody does.
I did. I used to sweat the small stuff. I
had to give it up. During that year that we
weren't together, I did a little growing myself. It was
(21:41):
a realization that we were better as a couple than
we were separately. You have to have that feeling that
is intangible. My father said to me that he saw
my mother a dance at the Jewish Center for the
first time when she was eighteen and he was with
his best friend. From the first minute he looked at her,
(22:04):
he saw her and he said, I gotta have it.
I saw him and I said, I have to have
that like forever. Whatever it is, I'm going to make
this work. And he evidently the same thing. You evidently
the same thing Chicago, New York. I'm going to accommodate
it because there were a lot of girls in Chicago,
(22:27):
but you saw this one, this girl, and you really
had to have this girl. So whatever it had to
be in your your life, that's what you did that.
You can't identify it because the truth of the matter is,
no matter how you slice it, and no matter how
many words you use, it all is irrelevant unless when
(22:50):
you touch your mate, there's a special feeling. When you
speak to her, there's a special feeling. When you hugger,
there's a special feeling. I think the foundation of a
good marriage ones that last is a deep love and
a devotion to your mate. If you look at your
mate and you love her as we do, then it
(23:13):
all works, no matter little irritations. They fall into place,
but you can't replace the touch, the kiss, making love,
and the main thing is that she has a tremendous
ability to make me laugh. And there you have it.
(23:34):
What makes the marriage of Judge Judy and Jerry shinin
last This has been so much and you are the
nicest man that ever lived. Well, that's the problem with
this interview. That is the problem with this Somebody said
something nice to me. She can't until next time. I'm
filled down a he and I'm Marlow Thomas how't told
(23:57):
us how well? I'm telling you. He's different. He's selfish, Jerry,
but he's adorable. He is he is adorable. Suffer you
have to come to my rescue double Day. There's a
production of Pushkin Industries. The show was created by US
and produced by Sarah Lilly. Michael Bahari is associate producer.
(24:19):
Musical adaptations of It Had to Be You by Sellwagon, Simfinette,
Marlo and I are executive producers, along with Mia Lobell
and Letal Molad from Pushkin and special thanks to Jacob Weisberg,
Malcolm Gladwell, Heather Fain, John Snars, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler,
(24:43):
Emily Rostek, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams, and Bruce Kluger. If
you like our show, please remember to share, rate and
review Thanks for listening
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