'Marty Was Always My Best Friend': Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Love Story
LatestWives—and until 1981, they were always wives—of Supreme Court justices have historically had roles not unlike a gaggle of First Ladies: sitting for photographs in Good Housekeeping, sitting in a special reserved section of the court even after their husbands retired, gathering for lunch three times a year in what used to be called the Ladies Dining Room. When the second woman arrived on the court, it was conceded that this woman thing was probably not a fluke. In 1997, the room was finally renamed the Natalie Cornell Rehnquist Dining Room, after the chief justice’s late wife. (It was Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s suggestion, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg sometimes pointed out that the Chief hated change, but could not say no to that one.)
John O’Connor was the sole first gentleman for over a dozen years. He and RBG’s husband Marty used to joke that they were members of the Dennis Thatcher Society, which Marty described as one’s wife having “a job which deep in your heart you wish you had.” Marty added, “Now let me just say that in my case it is not true. Only because I really don’t like work. She works like fury all the time. The country’s better off as it is.”
In later years, when John O’Connor was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and Justice O’Connor retired, Marty was the only male member of the group. He didn’t care, said Cathleen Douglas Stone, widow of William O. Douglas. “Marty liked being a spouse,” she wrote in Chef Supreme, a cookbook of Marty’s greatest hits put out by the Supreme Court Historical Society. “I remember being surprised when I realized his dishes weren’t catered,” she added.
On each clerk’s birthday, Marty would bake a cake—almond or chocolate, sometimes ginger, lemon, or carrot. The justice would leave a to-the-point note: “It’s your birthday, so Marty baked a cake.” Sometimes the clerks would mull the day’s work over Marty’s biscotti.
“I was always in awe of her,” says former clerk Kate Andrias, “but there was something disarming about seeing her with a partner who adores her but also treats her like a human being.” Another clerk, Heather Elliott, wrote about one late night, after an event, when RBG was working in chambers while Marty read quietly. “I started to talk to her about the research I had done, and while I was talking, Marty got up and walked toward us. I started freaking out in my mind—‘Is what I am saying that stupid? What is he coming over here for?!’—only to watch him come up to RBG, fix her collar (which had somehow fallen into disarray), and then go back to his book. The comfortable intimacy of that moment was something I will always remember.”