Her Father Faced Death Threats—and the Experience Helped Shape the Woman She Became

Threats against her father brought fear into her childhood, but those unsettling years would eventually influence both the person she became and the profession she created. Today, she has married one man twice and ranks among America’s most instantly recognizable stars. Yet her journey toward remarkable success was never conventional…

She was accused of occupying a seat meant for a man. Instead of retreating, she went on to create a television empire. Later, when grief nearly broke her, she returned to the same husband she had previously divorced.

Decades before millions of viewers knew her face, this forceful personality was simply a determined Brooklyn girl intent on designing a life of her own. Many women in her generation were expected to prioritize a husband and children, but she imagined a different future.

She once explained that most young women around her planned to marry and raise families. Her own ambition was to become a woman whose profession distinguished her from everyone else.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, while the world was at war, she was raised by parents with German Jewish and Russian Jewish roots.

She has joked that she may have been cute but was never a knockout, adding that construction workers had stopped whistling when she passed them many decades earlier.

Her father, Murray, practiced dentistry and was later praised by his daughter as the finest person imaginable. Her mother, Ethel, managed an office and was memorably characterized by her daughter as a straightforward “meat and potatoes” woman.

The future cultural figure has credited much of her firm ethical outlook to her father. While working part-time for the city, Murray noticed that public money could be saved if officials manufactured certain dental supplies themselves instead of purchasing them at inflated rates from outside businesses.

When he argued for that change, the consequences became frightening. Death threats began arriving. Murray wanted to continue defending what he believed was right, but he eventually stepped back when the danger started terrifying his family.

A deeply observant Jewish grandfather

The episode stayed with his young daughter. She was only 8, yet watching her father defend a principle—and witnessing the potential cost to everyone close to him—helped form the moral standards she carried into adulthood.

Her strongly religious Jewish grandfather also shaped her thinking. During a 2021 interview with The Guardian, she remembered him explaining on Yom Kippur that he fasted and climbed the stairs to his apartment as penance for his sins.

In the logic of an eight-year-old child, she interpreted that lesson to mean that if she behaved properly throughout the year, she would be allowed to eat and use the stairs on Yom Kippur.

She recounted it as a warm childhood memory, but it also reflected the environment in which she grew up: right and wrong appeared sharply defined, and doing the proper thing seemed both clear and achievable.

By age 10, she had already chosen law as her future. Her father hoped she might ultimately become a senator, but she had mapped out the first requirement herself, reasoning that she would need to qualify as a lawyer before anything else.

She later recalled that she was an excellent talker who could argue her way free from almost any predicament.

The men around her questioned whether she belonged

She studied at American University in Washington, D.C., and completed her degree in 1963. She was the sole woman in a graduating class of 126 students, but the opposition she encountered did not stop there.

At New York Law School, a professor reportedly challenged her presence directly. She remembered being asked why she was occupying a place that could have gone to a man expected to provide for a family.

Such a remark might have convinced some women to abandon their plans. In her case, it seems to have strengthened her resolve.

She graduated in 1965 and began developing the legal career she had long envisioned. Her personal circumstances soon grew more complicated: she married while young and had two children.

Eventually, she resigned from work to concentrate on raising them, yet the choice failed to give her the satisfaction she had anticipated. She returned to family court, where her direct temperament, sharp judgment, and refusal to tolerate excuses began drawing notice.

Then a single development transformed everything.

The courtroom turned her into a celebrity

Her reputation finally reached journalists. A profile published by the Los Angeles Times in 1993 introduced her to a much broader audience, and a 60 Minutes crew soon recorded proceedings in her courtroom. Television executives recognized an unusual presence.

Her own courtroom program debuted in 1996 and rapidly became a major success. For 25 years, audiences watched her resolve conflicts using blunt questions, fast humor, and almost no patience for foolishness.

The production ultimately generated thousands of cases and episodes, becoming one of television’s most successful courtroom series. She also understood precisely how essential she was to its appeal.

She pointed out that The People’s Court had used multiple judges and The Tonight Show had featured several hosts, while I Love Lucy had only one Lucille Ball.

Being treated merely as an employee was not enough for her. She recalled telling the company nearly 20 years earlier that she wanted a partnership rather than a salary-only relationship. She could produce the program without them because she had arranged the ability to do so, she argued, but they could not create it without her.

That confidence produced extraordinary financial results. She became one of the best-paid figures on television and was reportedly earning tens of millions of dollars in a single year. Her wealth was eventually estimated at $440 million.

Behind the courtroom triumph, however, her personal relationships followed an unexpected route.

She divorced her first husband, then discovered love again

Her initial marriage ended in 1976. She described the experience as frightening because no one else in her family had divorced before her.

She later acknowledged feeling resentful that her husband regarded her profession as little more than a pastime. She still called him a genuinely lovely man, but said his attitude toward her work eventually became impossible for her to ignore.

Fewer than six months after that divorce, she encountered another lawyer named Jerry. Their introduction was anything but romantic in the traditional sense.

Jerry remembered speaking with a New York Post reporter in a bar about a case when Judy approached, put a finger close to his face, and demanded to know who he was. He answered by telling her to remove her finger from his face. From that encounter onward, he said, they remained together.

They married in 1977, although their relationship still had another dramatic chapter ahead.

Then grief drove them apart

In 1990, her father died. She had regarded him as the one individual on whom she could depend completely, and the loss overwhelmed her.

Rather than confronting the sadness directly, she found herself expressing anger toward Jerry. She later explained that blaming him for not filling the enormous absence felt easier than dealing with the grief itself.

The couple divorced and began dating other people. In time, however, both recognized a truth they could not dismiss: they missed one another. They chose to marry again.

She once said she would happily have married Jerry only two days after their first meeting, even though they actually waited a year. Explaining why she eventually wanted him back, she said she missed him, enjoyed having someone to care for, and felt naturally suited to being part of a pair.

Their unusual romance endured marriage, divorce, profound loss, and separation before finding its way home again.

The person behind the famous judge

To millions of television viewers, she was the formidable judge capable of silencing a room with a glance. Her relatives experienced a gentler version of her.

After becoming a grandmother, she admitted that the youngest family members received especially soft treatment. Asked whether she spoiled them, she tried to imagine a way the family did not—but concluded that they certainly did.

She was equally proud that the legal profession ran through her family, with several children and stepchildren choosing careers in law.

Another unexpected scene unfolded at her grandson’s wedding. The famously unshakable woman became visibly emotional, and Jerry noticed at once.

He said it was the first occasion on which he had seen her so moved that he thought a tear might actually emerge.

The woman at the center of all these memories is Judith Susan Sheindlin, known to millions simply as Judge Judy.

A cultural icon

A December 1996 portrait taken in Los Angeles captured Judge Judy Sheindlin as her television fame was beginning to soar.

She progressed from being the only female student in her college class—and being told that she had taken a man’s rightful place—to becoming one of the most familiar personalities on American television.

She constructed a legal profession, built a television powerhouse, and accumulated wealth valued in the hundreds of millions. Through every upheaval, she also managed to reunite with the husband she had once left.

That is an extraordinary outcome for a woman who was once told she did not belong.