Judy Blume Is A Proud Mom, Stepmom, & Grandma

Judy Blume books have been guiding so many of us through childhood for decades. Her humor, her storytelling, and perhaps above all, her deep empathy for children has made her a favorite of both kids and their parents for generations. Books like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, which has been made into a major film, Tiger Eyes, and Starring Sally J. Friedman as Herself are absolute mainstays for childhood. And all of that empathy comes from not just her own memories of childhood, but of being a mom of two herself.

Judy Sussman was a student at New York University when she met and future lawyer John Blume. He was himself a student at Cornell Law School at the time, and the two married in 1959. The next two years saw the newly anointed Judy Blume experience two big events in her life. In 1960 she graduated from NYU with a Bachelor of Arts in education. And in 1961 she became a mom for the first time. Here’s what else you need to know about Blume’s family, her husband, and children.

Daughter Randy Lee was born in 1961.

In 1961, Blume became a first-time mom when she and then-husband John welcomed their daughter, Randy Lee. After becoming a mom, Blume became a homemaker in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, taking care of her little girl and we can only assume, collecting bits of intel on the way children and families worked to write about in a few short years.

Her daughter Randy is a therapist and made the author a grandmother.

While Blume rarely discusses her adult children in public, we do know that she is a therapist and clinical social worker who lives in Cambridge. Much like her mother did in her books, Randy Blume offers insight into the way people’s minds work.

In Blume’s personal blog Judy’s Anxiety Diary, the proud grandmother shared a tidbit from a Mother’s Day visit with her daughter Randy and grandson, whose name she did not share beyond his first initial, E. She did share that the two of them had a sleepover at her hotel room in Boston, where he refused to call it a slumber party because “we don’t have flashlights and we don’t stay up all night whispering.”

Blume welcomed her son Lawrence Andrew in 1963.

Blume welcomed her son Lawrence in 1963, and when her children were toddlers she did her best to follow in her mother’s footsteps by raising model children. “She told me to polish the children’s shoes and wash their laces every day while they’re napping,” she told The New York Times. “And guess what? I did, until I started to question it.”

Her son Lawrence is a filmmaker.

Blume’s son Lawrence is a filmmaker whose credits include directing a critically-acclaimed 2012 adaptation of her beloved book Tiger Eyes. Like mother, like son.

A new marriage brought a stepdaughter into Blume’s life.

Judy Blume married former law professor George Cooper in 1987 and it sounds as though it was very much love at first sight. Or at least second sight since the two moved in together after their second date. Cooper is also a producer who worked on Tiger Eyes, and he made Blume stepmom to his daughter Amanda, a political consultant in New Mexico.

These days, the 85-year-old author is living her best life in Key West with Cooper, a bunch of writer friends, and some chickens. We couldn’t be happier to hear it.