At 79, Judge Judy Says She's 'Not Tired' Despite Debuting New Show 'Judy Justice'

May 10, 2022 by apost team

Courtroom-TV-classic "Judge Judy" officially came to an end in July 2021 after its 25th season. The show’s host Judy Sheindlin first announced the news when she appeared on "The Ellen Degeneres Show" in March 2020, where she talked about her plans to move on to a new show afterward.

The show's 25th season — which began in Sept. 2020 and ended in July of the following year — was its last one on NBC, however, it didn't signal the end of Judy's career on television. That same year, she began filming a new show that premiered on Amazon, titled "Judy Justice."

During her 2020 appearance on "The Ellen Degeneres Show," Judy said:

"I've had a 25-year-long marriage with CBS and it's been successful ... Next year will be our 25th season, silver anniversary, and CBS, I think felt they wanted to optimally utilize the repeats of my program. Because now they have 25 years of reruns. So, what they decided to do was to sell a couple of years' worth of reruns. But I'm not tired, so 'Judy Justice' will be coming out a year later."

The TV personality also said at the time that fans shouldn’t mourn her original show, since reruns would air on CBS for years to come.

"Judge Judy, you'll be able to see next year — a full year, all new shows. With a ponytail!” she said. “The following couple of years, you should be able to catch all the reruns that CBS has sold to the stations that are currently carrying (Judge) Judy, and 'Judy Justice' will be going elsewhere. Isn't that fun?"

Let's take a look at how Judy got her start and what she's up to today.

According to Biography, the famous judge was born Judith Susan Blum on Oct. 21, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York. In an interview with The Guardian in 2008, Judy described her father as "the greatest thing since sliced bread" and her mother as "a meat and potatoes kind of gal." After her father died in 1990, she said her mother kept the family together. 

Judy graduated from American University in 1963 and stayed on to continue her studies at American University Washington College of Law. After a year, she continued her studies at New York Law School. By the following year, she had earned her law degree, passed the bar exam and was hired as a corporate lawyer with a cosmetic firm.

Almost a decade later, in 1972, Judy took a job as a prosecutor in the family court system. Her success and reputation for being an assertive and no-nonsense prosecutor led New York Mayor Ed Koch to appoint her to be a judge in family court in 1982.

In Feb. 1993, Judy became a national figure when she was featured in the Los Angeles Times. She was approached to run a courtroom program and in 1996, she retired from the bench to star in the show, "Judge Judy." When the program first made its way to daytime television in 1996, it had to compete against heavyweights such as "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and "The Jerry Springer Show." But by its third season, "Judge Judy" had vaulted past the morning titans and taken gold as the highest viewed daytime program. 

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By the turn of the century, "Judge Judy" had become a staple of American television, and Judy had become an A-List celebrity. In 2007, Forbes listed her as the 13th richest woman in entertainment. A 2013 Parade article on the judge found she was the highest-paid person on television, earning $47 million a year, or $900,000 per workday, as she worked for only 52 days a year.  

Meanwhile, in her personal life, Judy first got married to prosecutor Ronald Levy in 1964. Together they had two children, however, their marriage ended in divorce in 1976 after 12 years together. Then in 1977, Judy married attorney Jerry Sheindlin, and from their marriage, she has three stepchildren — Gregory, Jonathan, and Nicole.

Incidentally, Jerry is a retired New York Supreme Court justice who also went on to become a TV judge, according to E! Online. He was an arbitrator on “The People’s Court” from 1999 until 2001. Although their marriage has not been perfect, Judy and her husband have shown an immense amount of love and respect for each other over the years. 

However, they actually divorced in 1990 after Judy had endured some stress and struggles in her personal life following her father’s death in 1990. Jerry struggled to understand how to properly take care of his wife during this time, which only created more problems between them.

“She said to me, ‘If you can’t maneuver this, I’m going to divorce you,’” Jerry recalled. “And I said, ‘Oh yeah? I dare you.’ And the next day I got divorce papers.”

Luckily, the couple was able to come together again and remarried the following year. “I missed Jerry,” Judy told Closer Weekly. “I like to have someone to fuss over.” Judy has three stepchildren with Jerry and a total of 13 grandchildren. 

After a career in the court and over 25 years on screen, there's no denying people have fallen in love with Judy. "Judge Judy" became a TV treasure. Her performance on the show made her a household name on American TV and internationally, and even saw her bag multiple Daytime Emmy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2019 Daytime Emmys.

Judy's personality and intelligence have been determining factors in her fame. Despite being 79 years old, Judy proved she wasn't ready to say goodbye to practicing law or making reality television, which led her to "Judy Justice." After her jump from daytime television to a streaming service, she said it was a choice that she continued to stand behind. "You’ve got to be in it to win it,” she said. Her wit and decisiveness helped determine the truth on the show, even when cases were tricky to manage. “It’s not show business if there ain’t no show, but the message is consistent, and I mean it,” Judy added. 

This just goes to show that Judy is a self-made woman whose personality continues to be celebrated even today. "Judy Justice" is in its first season, of which 120 episodes were taped over the course of five months — that's a remarkable difference compared with the 160 episodes she taped for “Judge Judy” each year.

Despite her immense success and long career in the limelight, the famous judge never set out to become rich.

"I was hoping we would have a three- or four-year run and that my husband and I would be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment one block off the beach in Florida as a retirement place," she recalled. "We were civil servants. We had five kids that were all educated, most went to graduate school. We tried to see to it they weren't burdened with a lot of debt." 

Incredibly, Judy still isn't slowing down, as "Judy Justice" has been renewed for a second season.

Are you a fan of Judy Sheindlin? What are your thoughts on "Judge Judy" or "Judy Justice"? Let us know, and pass this on to your friends and family!