Can anybody recommend a beginners telescope? My wife wants one for her birthday. Sub $200

A suggestion for that price range is a good set of binoculars and a tripod to steady them.

There are some Newtonian reflectors like This from Celestron that ok to start with. This will give better light capture abilities and a starter eyepiece.

I do not have experience with the above but have a Dobsonian 8” that is all manual that was ~$500 and great starter to learn where objects were in the sky.

Astronomy ,like bass fishing and quilting can be very much a money pit.

Anything in your $200.00 price range will limit your abilities SO much that she will not enjoy the experience.

Search the www. for Astronomy clubs, classes or parties.

All of these will be 100 times more benificial and enjoyable than iffy optics .
Then

After learning about Astronomy, you can save up for the rig you require.

Go to cloudynights.com, skyandtelescope.com, see what they say about beginners' scopes.
Lots of folks buy scopes, don't use them, then sell them cheap; like exercise bikes.
Cloudynights.com and astromart.com have classified ads.
Orion (telescope.com) has pretty good pretty cheap stuff.
One problem is you need not only a telescope, but a mount for it. The mount is likely to be more expensive than the scope if it's to be of any use at all. Then you need eyepieces....

I found a guide for beginners' scopes on space.com, so it's pretty reliable, and they tell you the bad as well as the good aspects of various types of scopes.
Looks like they're recommending scopes in $400 range: Link

if your budget is $200 I'd suggest getting a pair of 8X35's or go whole hog and get 10X50's and get a camera tripod.

A good quality eyepiece is more than $200

I started w/ one of these back when they were $199. I still have it and it's a nice little scope to pick up and walk outside w/.
https://www.telescope.com/Orio...rc/2160/p/102009.uts

It's had good reviews in the past and I remember reading about one reviewer completing a Messier Marathon w/ one.

The biggest downside is that while it's stable, sometimes you'll want to get it higher up which will require something else that is also stable.