Bike suggestion for my 5ft wife??

As others have said you need to sit on them really. If my teenage years taught me anything, it was mostly an indepth anatomical study of the fairer sex. One of the things I learnt was that girlies generally have longer legs (sometimes all the way up to their bottom!) than blokes of a similar height, so height may not be a complete obstacle.

Don't rate them personally but there used to be loads of Virago 535s kicking around, they must be dirt cheap right now and they're very very low (and dead easy to ride I'm told). As Northy says, 400 race reps are a bit old but very accomodating, I personally think the VFR400R was possibly the best (attainable by mortals) bike ever built.

I've heard it said that the Kawasaki ER6 is good for short people but I've never looked at one myself, don't like the styling. Even the faired model has normal bars so might be easy for a new rider.