Courts

Nina Totenberg Dishes On Her Friendship With Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Even Supreme Court justices like to chat about romance and dating.

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(Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage for Glamour Magazine)

When my late husband was very sick for a long time — almost five years — [Ruth] told me, “You’re spending too much time at the hospital. You have to go back to work. It won’t be the best work you’ve ever done, but nonetheless, it will be good work and it will keep your head above water and you’ll be a better wife to him as a result.” It was absolutely the best advice anybody gave me, and it’s advice I give to anybody whose spouse is very sick. Periodically, because he was in the hospital for a year, she would just sort of scoop me up and take me to the opera with her and Marty or invite me to dinner. A while after Floyd died, I remember she was taking me to the opera, and I said, “Ruth, I started to date somebody.” She turned around — in my mind’s eye, her head swiveled around — and she said, “I want details now.”

— Journalism legend Nina Totenberg, who’s been covering the Supreme Court for NPR for decades, offering some comments on her friendship with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in an interview with Lisa Ryan of The Cut on how she gets it done. Totenberg shared a friendship with the late Justice Antonin Scalia as well, and says of Scalia and Ginsburg, “They’re both remarkable people that I’ve been privileged to know and like and have them like me, too.”

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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