Ruth Bader Ginsberg On Her Workout, Love Life And The Notorious B.I.G.

Chicago Tribune

She’s already a U.S. Supreme Court justice, a feminist icon and a hero to millennials, but at 84, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is about to add another unlikely string to her bow: fitness star.

The octogenarian judge — who charmed a packed house at Roosevelt University’s Auditorium Theater on Monday night — will next month be the star of a new fitness book “The RBG Workout,” which explains how she stays in shape.

Ginsburg, who has mastered 30-second planks, among other moves, told 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Ann Claire Williams in an onstage interview that her trainer Bryant Johnson “was approached by a number of publishers who asked ‘What is Ginsburg up to?’ This book tells it all!”

The justice works out twice a week and is nicknamed “TAN” for “tough as nails” by Johnson, who has trained her since she was treated for cancer in 1999.

Given her advanced years, her health is a matter of national politics: President Donald Trump would have the right to nominate her replacement, should she retire. But, to applause, Ginsburg said she would go on “as long as I can, full-steam.”

Her often-repeated line about the number of women on the Supreme Court — “there will be enough when there are nine” — also brought the house down, as did her recollection of how she and her late husband of 56 years, Marty Ginsburg, got together as Cornell University students despite both having out-of-town partners they’d see on weekends.

“We were best friends for a long time,” she said of her husband.

And though she is more of an opera buff than a hip-hop head, Ginsburg said she had learned all about the late rapper Biggie Smalls, aka Notorious B.I.G., after she was dubbed ‘Notorious R.B.G.’ in a popular Tumblr that became a best-selling book.

“We were both born and bred in Brooklyn, N.Y.,” she noted, with approval.