Judy Sheindlin – or as she’s better known to the world, Judge Judy – has spoken candidly about her marriage in a new interview.
The TV judge, 81, discussed life with her husband Jerry Sheindlin during an appearance on CNN, even touching on their year-long divorce in 1990.
When asked why she and Jerry divorced 13 years into their marriage, Judy replied, “That’s a long story”, but said its conclusion was her discovery that “most men were alike”.
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“They have basic needs that are different from women’s,” she told interviewer Chris Wallace.
“They like to be fed. They like to be cuddled. They like to have their alone time that you take out the alone box and leave [them] alone.
“And if you feed ’em and love ’em up a little bit and don’t get in their way too much, they’re happy.”
The Sheindlins remarried in 1991 after one year divorced, and remain married now.
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Though Judy didn’t go into details in this interview, she and Jerry, a fellow lawyer, have explained the reasons behind the split previously.
In 1990, the Judge Judy star was grieving the death of her father. Unsatisfied with her husband’s efforts at taking care of her, she gave him an ultimatum.
“She said to me, ‘If you can’t maneuver this, I’m going to divorce you,'” Jerry recalls in the book What Makes a Marriage Last, per E! News.
Judge Judy Sheindlin through the years: 1942 to 2024
“And I said, ‘Oh, yeah? I dare you.’ And the next day I got divorce papers. The next day. So, that was the end of that.”
Judy admitted that in her grief over losing her father, she had redirected her emotions.
“[An] easier emotion for me to deal with was being angry at Jerry for not picking up the slack than dealing with the sadness of the loss,” she told Closer.
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Jerry said the time apart was “such a strange experience”, and that he missed his wife within a week of them being separated.
“It was the first time in years that we didn’t get to see each other every single day,” he said.
After 48 years together, Judy told CNN her husband “still has a sense of humour” and is “still really smart and sharp.”
“He takes wonderful care of himself. And I sort of like it, because he maintains that physique that I fell in love with 48 years ago.”
