--- title: Inside Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s History-Shaping Marriage of Equals description: In addition to her barrier-breaking work, Ginsburg also leaves behind an important lesson about how a modern marriage can be a partnership. canonical: https://time.com/5488428/ruth-bader-ginsburg-marriage-equals/ author: Rachel E. Greenspan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-09-19T15:04:41.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:42:13.130Z article:section: History og:title: ‘The Only Person I Have Loved.’ Inside Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s History-Shaping Marriage of Equals og:description: "Marty Ginsburg was the first boy I met who cared that I had a brain" og:url: https://time.com/5488428/ruth-bader-ginsburg-marriage-equals/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3e1e71e3edafd4d9/6989433016d8848c27c3467d/ruth-bader-ginsburg-marty-marriage-supreme-court.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2988 og:image:height: 1681 og:image:alt: ruth-bader-ginsburg-marty-marriage-supreme-court og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: ‘The Only Person I Have Loved.’ Inside Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s History-Shaping Marriage of Equals twitter:description: "Marty Ginsburg was the first boy I met who cared that I had a brain" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3e1e71e3edafd4d9/6989433016d8848c27c3467d/ruth-bader-ginsburg-marty-marriage-supreme-court.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # ‘The Only Person I Have Loved.’ Inside Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s History-Shaping Marriage of Equals > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: In Memoriam: Ruth Bader Ginsburg [Watch (HLS stream): In Memoriam: Ruth Bader Ginsburg](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/gGufB4id.m3u8) (2:09)  _Published 2020-09-18. On March 15, 2019, legions of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s admirers celebrated her 86th birthday by dropping to the ground and grinding out the Super Diva’s signature push-ups on the steps of courthouses around the country._ by [Rachel E. Greenspan](https://time.com/author/rachel-e-greenspan/) ## Rachel E. Greenspan Sep 19, 2020 3:04 PM UTC  Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then a Supreme Court nominee, is greeted by her husband, Martin, as she introduced her family during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 20, 1993. Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then a Supreme Court nominee, is greeted by her husband, Martin, as she introduced her family during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 20, 1993. John Duricka—AP/REX/Shutterstock by [Rachel E. Greenspan](https://time.com/author/rachel-e-greenspan/) ## Rachel E. Greenspan Sep 19, 2020 3:04 PM UTC In her years as a lawyer and then on the Supreme Court bench, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, [who died](https://time.com/5660188/ruth-bader-ginsburg-dies/) of complications from [metastatic pancreatic cancer](https://time.com/5507530/ruth-bader-ginsburg-cancer-history/) on Sept. 18, 2020, earned a deserved reputation as a [warrior for gender equality](https://time.com/5354990/ruth-bader-ginsburg-time/). As the “Notorious RBG” became a pop culture icon later in her life, that reputation only solidified, as evidenced by the release of two separate films in 2018 that centered on her long legal career: the documentary _RBG_ and Mimi Leder’s biopic _On the Basis of Sex._ Both movies show Ginsburg’s toughness and her grit, and extensively describe her lifelong work to end sex discrimination in the law. “It’s definitely the case that as a result of the work that she led, \[the discrimination that\] was once really common in the law no longer is,” Emily Martin, the vice president for education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center, told TIME in a previous interview. In that work, fittingly, she had an important partner: her husband, Martin. Just as Ginsburg will be remembered professionally for her hard-earned legacy of breaking barriers for women in the courts, she also leaves behind an important lesson from her personal life, about how a modern marriage can be a partnership.  Martin D. Ginsburg and Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the fall of 1954 when Martin was serving in the Army. Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States Ginsburg herself said, when the movie premiered in New York, that the depiction of Martin in _On the Basis of Sex_ (written by Ginsburg’s nephew, Daniel Stiepleman) did her husband justice — even as she joked that actor Armie Hammer was definitely much taller than the real Martin, a tax attorney who died in 2010. The way Hammer effortlessly chopped vegetables at the kitchen counter as the primary chef in their home, a glass of wine within reach — “That was Marty,” she said.  Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with her husband, Martin. The Washington Post/Getty Images The couple first met as undergraduates at Cornell University. In [an interview with NPR’s Nina Totenberg](https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/what-it-takes-ruth-bader-ginsburg/4226608.html) in July of 2016, Ginsburg said that Martin, who was one year her senior, immediately made an impression. “I many times said that Marty Ginsburg was the first boy I met who cared that I had a brain,” she said. They wed in 1954 and this first impression held true throughout 56 years of marriage, as Ginsburg expressed emphatically in various interviews, including at the _On the Basis of Sex_ premiere in 2018. The two were as much of a team as two people can be. Soon after Ruth began law school at Harvard in 1956 — [one of only nine women](https://web.archive.org/web/20130116072052/http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlg/vol27/bader-ginsburg.pdf#) in a class of roughly 500 men — Martin, who was one year ahead at the school, fell ill. He had testicular cancer, a [diagnosis](https://www.cancer.org/cancer/testicular-cancer/about/key-statistics.html) that required a number of surgeries and radiation therapy. Ruth, raising their toddler daughter, Jane, continued shining academically at Harvard Law while caring for a sick husband. That care included helping Martin pass (and excel in) his classes, too. Ginsburg has said that after a day of her own classes, receiving notes for Martin’s from his peers, preparing dinner for the family, caring for a sick Marty and typing his senior paper, per his dictation, she would return to her own coursework at around 2 a.m. She remained at the top of her class at Harvard, rarely getting more than three hours of sleep per night.  Photograph by Sebastian Kim—AUGUST for TIME Despite all of her hard work, the country wasn’t quite ready for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. After graduating from Columbia Law School in 1959—having transferred there from Harvard after the Dean wouldn’t allow her to complete course work in New York, where Martin had to go for work—she still couldn’t find a job at a law firm. Some judges wouldn’t allow her to clerk for them, explicitly telling her it was because of her gender. Only about [one in three married women](https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1975/compendia/hist%5Fstats%5Fcolonial-1970/hist%5Fstats%5Fcolonial-1970p1-chD.pdf) worked outside the home in 1960, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a rate which doubled by the end of the 20th century. Furthermore, between 1960 and 1983, the percentage of women lawyers increased from just 2 to 15, [a 1984 New York _Times_ Magazine article reported](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1984/12/09/133357.html?action=click&pageNumber=583). So it was no surprise that when she sought to practice law at the start of the 1960s, she ran into trouble. Ginsburg eventually got a job, but it wasn’t practicing law directly. She was hired as a law professor at Rutgers University, where she remained for nearly decade. Meanwhile, Martin soared in his own career, and he and Ruth had their second child, James, in 1965\. All along, Martin made it clear that Ruth’s success, not just his own, mattered for their family.  Ruth Bader Ginsburg, her husband, Martin, and their children, James and Jane, in a boat off the shore of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, December 1980. Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States There is a telling moment in _On the Basis of Sex_ that highlights how the Ginsburgs’ relationship differed from what might have been expected at the time. The two are at a party with Martin’s colleagues during Ruth’s tenure as a law professor. The women at the party are chatting, and at the other side of the room, the men tell jokes about law. Ruth walks around looking uncomfortable until she concedes to casually join in on the men’s conversation. The image of one woman in a party dress among the dark-suited men is stark. Hammer’s Martin smiles, welcoming his wife to join the conversation. Martin Ginsburg’s vehement support of his wife held so strong that he presented her with one of his cases: a tax case concerning gender discrimination against a man. The Ginsburgs argued the case, [_Moritz v. Commissioner,_](https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/469/466/79852/)together, in 1972, marking the first big win for Ruth and the start of a series of cases that began to break down the laws that allowed men and women to be treated differently. Ruth’s ascension as a star lawyer paralleled her country’s growing acceptance of gender equality, as she founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU and began to pave the way for her own future on the Supreme Court.  Ruth Bader Ginsberg is sworn in as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, as President Bill Clinton stands behind her and her husband, Martin, holds the bible in 1993. Mark Reinstein—Corbis/Getty Images Martin’s role in Ruth’s career didn’t end with that 1972 case. Her husband made it his mission to secure her nomination on the Supreme Court. “Well, he was my campaign manager,” Ruth told Totenberg in 2018 at the _On the Basis of Sex_ premiere. A well-known tax law professor at Georgetown University, Martin began lobbying women’s rights organizations and sending letters to the press. Sure enough, President Bill Clinton nominated Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg to become a Supreme Court Justice in 1993. “I have had the great good fortune to share life with a partner truly extraordinary for his generation, a man who believed at age 18 when we met, and who believes today, that a woman’s work, whether at home or on the job, is as important as a man’s,” Ruth said [in her Supreme Court confirmation hearing](https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/21/us/the-supreme-court-excerpts-from-senate-hearings-on-the-ginsburg-nomination.html). And, importantly, beyond this firm support—there was always love. [Martin Ginsburg wrote one final letter](http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/#interview) to Ruth before he died in 2010\. “You,” he wrote, “are the only person I have loved in my life.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5488428/ruth-bader-ginsburg-marriage-equals/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5488428/ruth-bader-ginsburg-marriage-equals/"},"headline":"‘The Only Person I Have Loved.’ Inside Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s History-Shaping Marriage of Equals","datePublished":"2020-09-19T15:04:41.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:42:13.130Z","description":"\"Marty Ginsburg was the first boy I met who cared that I had a brain\"","url":"https://time.com/5488428/ruth-bader-ginsburg-marriage-equals/","keywords":["remembrance","Supreme Court","movies","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3e1e71e3edafd4d9/6989433016d8848c27c3467d/ruth-bader-ginsburg-marty-marriage-supreme-court.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Rachel E. 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