NEW YORK — Ruth Westheimer, a grandmotherly psychologist who as “Dr. Ruth” became America’s best-known sex counselor with her frank and funny radio and television shows, died Friday at her home in New York City. She was 96.
His death was announced by his spokesman, Pierre Lehu.
Westheimer was in her 50s when she first appeared on the radio in 1980, answering listeners’ questions about sex and relationships on New York’s WYNY. The show, “Sexually Speaking,” was just a 15-minute segment that aired after midnight on Sundays. But it was so popular that she quickly became a national media celebrity and a one-woman business conglomerate.
At her peak in the 1980s, she had live call-in shows on radio and television, wrote a column for Playgirl magazine, lent her name to a board game and its computer version, and began publishing books on sexuality that ranged from educating the young to revitalizing the elderly. College students adored her; her appearances on college campuses alone generated substantial income. She appeared in advertisements for cars, soft drinks, shampoo, typewriters, and condoms.
She even landed a role in the 1985 French film “One Woman or Two,” starring Gérard Depardieu and Sigourney Weaver and released in the United States in 1987. (“Dr. Ruth will never be mistaken for an actress,” Janet Maslin wrote in her New York Times review, “but she does have energy.”)
Today, it may take some effort to remember that Westheimer had a radical formula and considerable influence on social norms. Talk shows abounded in the 1980s, but until she came along, none had treated the subject of sex so exclusively and clinically. Nor could it have been anticipated that the messenger of Eros would be a 4-foot-10, middle-aged professor with a way of speaking that The Wall Street Journal described as “something like a cross between Henry Kissinger and a canary.”
A talk show about sex? “Why not?” she asked. “Why not share a few recipes on the air? I’m promoting sexual literacy in a time of unprecedented sexual freedom.”
Columnist Bill Geist, who visited her in the studio for a New York Times article in 1985, wrote that “she looks as if she is going to tell us in her cheerful half-European accent how to make a good apple strudel.”
“But when he opens his mouth, it’s like a code blue in the living room across the country,” he added. “He broadcasts on radio and television the most explicit instruction to insert tab A into slot B in sexual manipulation, stimulation and satisfaction.”
In response to a question that day, he warned, “Don’t let her do that while you’re driving!” But whether the topic was how to restore romance to a marriage or something a little more specialized — say, couldn’t there be a legitimate reason to use peanut butter in the bedroom? — he was trying to emphasize respectful relationships and safety, not just the mechanics of intimacy.
Westheimer is survived by his son, Joel; his daughter, Miriam; and four grandchildren.
In November 2023, Westheimer was named New York State’s first “Honorary Ambassador of Loneliness” by Gov. Kathy Hochul. In that role, which she had nominated, Westheimer would help “New Yorkers of all ages address the growing problem of social isolation, which is associated with multiple physical and mental health issues,” the governor said in a statement.
“I don’t want to be known just as a sex therapist,” Westheimer said at the time. “I want to be known as a therapist.”
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