JUDGE JUDY
How the TV titan found strength after betrayal.
“I am true to my word. I believe in right and wrong.”
— Judy
With a twinkle in her eye, Judge Judy Sheindlin didn’t care if she was guilty of fawning over husband Jerry when he recently appeared as a guest judge on Hot Bench, a show she created and produces. “He still looks great. He’s as sharp as ever,” Judy, 74, raved. The no-nonsense judge lives up to her reputation when it comes to revealing the secret to their 40 years together: “It’s always a work in progress,” she tells Closer. “You just have to keep plugging away at it.”
That’s especially true when marital bliss isn’t an open-and-shut case, and it was far from that years ago when Judy discovered Jerry, now 83, had been having an affair with a younger woman — a waitress they both knew. “Judy was blindsided by his betrayal, and her heart was broken. She felt scared and alone,” an insider tells Closer. The powerful and highestpaid TV star — who reportedly makes $47 million a year — struggled to cope with her sudden state of vulnerability. “She’s always been a strong woman who usually gets her way,” says the insider. “But now there was a kink thrown into an area she thought she had control over.” It was a test of their love and whether it could survive.
JUDGMENT DAYS
Jerry’s indiscretion was actually the second test the couple faced — the first being their brief divorce in 1990. “Jerry and I had been married 12 years when my father died unexpectedly,” Judy recalls of the devastating loss of her dad, dentist Murray Blum, in 1989. Her father had always given her lots of love and “emotional stroking,” Judy says, and once he was gone, she started demanding the same from Jerry.
“I decided to change the rules of our marriage,” Judy reveals, even though she knew coddling wasn’t in Jerry’s nature. The result? “It was war. War is hell. We both became very unhappy
very quickly,” she adds. The couple — who met while they were both lawyers — divorced.
Suddenly, Judy was living on her own. She started dating again but after six months of being single, old feelings sent her back to Jerry. “I learned the hard way that sometimes what you think will make you happy won’t,” she says. “I love him and he loves me. We remarried within a year.”
By 1986, Judy had become a family court judge, and in 1996 her straight-shooting approach to justice helped her ink a deal for her daytime TV show. National fame and ratings success followed, but so did more tension at home. “After her TV career took off, cracks began to show in their marriage again,” the insider tells Closer. “Judy and Jerry were taking each other for granted.”
At the time, the couple lived primarily in Naples, Fla., but Judy would fly solo to LA to tape for weeks on end so she could concentrate on her intense caseload. “Jerry began to feel like a caddy to his wife,” the insider tells Closer. “It was a time that his ego needed stroking, and that’s just not a big tool in Judy’s skill set.”
Once Jerry had become the partner who needed some attention, “He began to feel bad about himself,” the insider says, “and he was uncomfortable with his wife taking center stage. They began to drift apart.” When he landed a TV gig himself as the judge on The People’s Court in 1999, things seemed to improve — but only temporarily.
“He beat me in the ratings for a couple of days in Hartford [Conn.] and he relished it. He wanted to move to Hartford,” Judy jokes. Ultimately, though, Jerry “didn’t click with TV audiences and the show let him go,” the insider says, “and it was a tremendous blow to his ego.”
With Judy’s time being eaten up with tapings and her rounds on the talk show circuits to promote her show and her books, Jerry started to look for affection elsewhere. He reportedly found it in 2002 with that young waitress at a diner in Florida who “made him feel like a man again,” according to the insider.
TRIAL BY FIRE
The affair hit the tabloids but Judy publicly played it cool, refusing to comment about it directly. But she was “spitting-nails angry at Jerry,” a source tells Closer. “It broke her heart.” Judy’s children Jamie and Adam (from her first marriage to Ronald Levy) were there to help her through the pain of feeling alone and betrayed. “They were still fairly
young when Judy first married Jerry,” says another friend, “and they have a good relationship with him. They couldn’t see their mother apart from Jerry, and they helped her understand that this could be fixed.”
In the end, though, it was up to Jerry to prove he was worth forgiving. “He was willing to do anything to win back her trust,” the friend says, and the couple sought counseling to help work through his infidelity. “When Judy examined the situation, she realized she couldn’t hold onto the pain and anger forever or it would eat her up,” the friend adds. Still, she made it crystal clear to Jerry that she would never tolerate a second mistake.
Her act of forgiveness and her ongoing ability to cope with the betrayal surprised many fans who see her as an example of someone who refuses to tolerate bad behavior and excuses. But to Beverly Hills psychologist Dr. Julie Armstrong, Judy’s case boils down to the fact that Jerry’s indiscretion wasn’t repeated over and over. “One time is not a pattern,” Dr. Armstrong tells Closer, “and if Judy is willing to say, ‘I love and respect you. You made a mistake and it hurt me, but I’m willing to work together, so let’s move forward,’ I think it’s a sign of strength. That can strengthen their relationship in a terrific way.” And the two continue to grow and thrive today in the wake of their test. “Judy is all about accountability, but she realized her own role in regard to what happened,” the source says. “Jerry got steamrolled by her amazing success, and she could see that while looking at it impartially.”
To fix that problem, she’s pulled back on spending time promoting her show and instead savors every moment with her husband, kids and grandkids. “She’s more attuned to Jerry’s feelings now and in many ways her own,” the source explains.
Adds the insider, “They’ve settled into a good life with their family and they’ve worked through their problems. They watch films, play gin rummy, and they both like to read. And Jerry is romantic, always bringing her flowers or buying her sweet little gifts.”
That love and support means the world to Judy, but so does the pride she has in confronting problems head-on — and succeeding. “I may come off as fearless on TV, but there have been many occasions in my life when I’ve felt that glimmer of fear,” she says. “I’ll tell you, I’m much prouder of the times I walked through it than I am of the times I held back.”
“Timidity does not make you happy. You’ve got to speak up for yourself.”
— Judy