Judge Judy Sheindlin rang in her 77th birthday on Monday, Oct. 21, and her husband, Jerry Sheindlin, picked out a near-perfect gift for her. Speaking with TMZ at the Montage in Beverly Hills on Monday, the daytime TV judge revealed that her husband had the same struggle as any man when it came to picking out her gift, and eh ultimately went with the next best thing.
“He said to me, ‘What do you want for your birthday? You always make it hard for me. What do you want?’” Sheindlin recalled. “I said I’d like a new Aston Martin. He said, ‘What’s your second choice?’ So I got a bathrobe.”
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Although a far cry from a brand new car, Jerry assured the TMZ reporter that the bathrobe was, in a roundabout way, similar to Sheindlin’s initial request.
“It was from Aston Martin,” he explained, adding that “it has a big Aston Martin” on it.
During the brief conversation, Sheindlin also opened up about her future, revealing that she has no intentions of stepping away from the courtroom anytime soon.
“I don’t look old enough to retire… I wanna work until I’m tired,” she said. “…[Retirement’s] not my thing. I don’t play golf.”
Heading in to year 77, Sheindlin made some big changes and generated plenty of buzz with fans online when, in April, she debuted a brand new ‘do. The new hairstyle, for which Sheindlin swapped out her traditional brown hair with caramel highlights styled into a short bob in favor of a ponytail, marked the first time she had changed her hairstyle in more than 20 years.
While fans flocked to social media to comment, many praising the new look as making her appear “refreshed and happy,” her longtime bailiff, Petri Hawkins-Byrd, eventually decided to add his voice to the conversation.
“Alright, alright! I tried to stay out of this, y’all won’t let me!” Byrd captioned side-by-side photos of the old ‘do and the new ‘do. “I prefer my boss with the old ‘do’ (left). More sophisticated and ‘Judy’cial. Just my opinion, not law!”
Sheindlin was still sporting the hairstyle when she accepted the lifetime achievement award at the 46th Daytime Emmys in early May. Presented by Amy Poehler, Sheindlin accepted the award with a speech reflecting on her life and decades-long career.
“Young lady, why are you taking the seat of a man who is going to use his law degree to make a living?” the TV judge said she was asked on her first day of law school. “So the moral of that story is, you challenge a kid from Brooklyn at your own peril.”
Sheindlin has certainly proven to be a success. Her syndicated program Judge Judy garners more than 10 million viewers daily and has helped her not only achieve the Guinness World Record for the longest career as a TV judge but also the title of highest paid talk show host.
