How a Driving Instructor to the Stars Spends Her Sundays

Shanti Gooljar recently got a $2,000 tip.She runs a driving school in Manhattan that caters to a high-end clientele, and only works on referrals.She says she has taught the offspring of a few names you might know:Jerry Seinfeld.

Rupert Murdoch.Vera Wang.

Katie Couric.She had initially worked as a paramedic.But after two years, she decided she did not like it and turned to a driving school in the Bronx.

Ms.Gooljar quickly realized she had found her calling.“I just got real good at what I was doing,” she said.

The teens she taught connected with her unfiltered, no-nonsense style, and they soon began giving her number to their friends.So she bought her own car and went freelance.

Ms.Gooljar, 62, opened her own school in 2014.“That was 10 years ago,” she said.

“And look at me now.”She owns the Empire State Driving School on the Upper West Side, which has five other instructors.Behind-the-wheel lessons go for as much as $200 per hour, and she works eight hours per day, seven days a week.Ms.

Gooljar lives in a three-bedroom apartment in the Bronx, near where she lived when she immigrated from Guyana with her four siblings in 1972.After the births of her sons — Philip, 43, and Michael, 38 — she and her husband,Vinny Gooljar, upgraded from a studio to a ground-floor space next to a police station, where she now lives alone.

Mr.Gooljar, to whom she was married for 43 years, died of a heart attack in 2022.“After he died, my family wanted me to go to Florida — my mom is there, and my brothers and sisters,” she said.

“But I’m at the age where I like the same routine.”ON AUTOPILOT I wake up at 5 a.m.I don’t need an alarm — it’s all in my head.Depending what time my first lesson is, I’ll usually stop by Dunkin’ for a small hot coffee with cream.

I’m a regular at a few of them — the one in the Bronx on Webster Avenue, and the one in Harlem near 122nd Street.They all know me — or rather, I make myself known to them!We are havin...