Mr Aidala’s mother, Mary Ann Piazza Aidala, was a schoolteacher. His father, Louis Aidala, is a lawyer who worked for Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan. Louis Aidala became a lawyer and represented clients including Eyad Ismoil, who was convicted of complicity in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Jennifer Lopez when she witnessed a 1999 nightclub shooting that left her then-boyfriend, the hip – hop artist Sean Combs.
Arthur Aidala and Mrs. Bertuna, his wife and law partner, live near his parents with their 5-year-old son and 7-month-old daughter. Ms. Bertuna, 45, was recently appointed Counsel to the Kings County Public Administrator. She started her career as an intern of Mr. Aidala and they married in 2016, a year after he divorced. (Mr Aidala also has a 16-year-old son from his first marriage.)
Mr. Aidala dates his early legal training to watch his father prepare his cases, and his own involvement in musical theater at Poly Prep in Brooklyn, where he attended high school. Hoping to become a professional actor, he attended the State University of New York at Purchase (alumni Edie Falco and Stanley Tucci, among others), but soon realized he was more interested in political science. After graduating, he enrolled in law school at the City University of New York.
However, he has not put away his dreams of performing. He just found a different kind of stage. During closing arguments for a recent murder trial, he theatrically brandished an undelivered Mother’s Day card as proof of how tirelessly he, a mother’s boy, had worked, and at one point fell to his knees right in front of the jury box.
“If you want to hold the attention of 12 people for hours,” he said, “I don’t think standing on a podium and reading notes is an effective way.”
Dinner with the Scalias
From the time Mr. Aidala was 16, his parents sent him to Italy every summer to connect with the family’s roots. After his second year of law, he studied abroad in Siena where Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court judge, taught for a week. The first night the judge and his wife were there, Mr. Aidala hosted a party in the student villa, where he cooked dinner for them and his fellow students.
