When Dr. Ruth and Richard Simmons met on TV (and a Dr. Ruth Sitcom?!)

This interview shows that these two very different Jewish TV icons were cut from the same cloth.

This month, we lost two huge cultural icons of the ‘80s and ‘90s — fitness guru Richard Simmons, who died at age 76 last Saturday, and sex therapist extraordinaire Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who passed away at age 96 the day before. The two were indefatigable and prolific, appearing on radio, TV and talk shows, touring the country and sometimes the world. Dr. Ruth had just filed the first draft of her new book about loneliness a few days before she passed away, and Simmons, though he retired from public life a little under a decade ago, was putting himself out there again, sharing posts on his Facebook and even doing some interviews, revealing that he was working on a Broadway musical about his life.

Dr. Ruth and Simmons were often on the road, and it seemed that they never were too far from each other, always hearing that the other had been to the university that the other was just about to give a talk at. But they did actually meet in 1986, in a wonderful episode of the “Dr. Ruth Westheimer” show, which aired between 1984 and 1991. Richard was there to promote “Richard Simmons and the Silver Foxes,” a workout special he did with his own Jewish mother and the parents of Farah Fawcett, Sylvester Stallone, Al Pacino and even Dustin Hoffman’s Jewish dad, Harry, who chuckles as he tells viewers in the introduction to the workout, "It'll make you feel terrific. C'mon, it's good for you!" 

Before you ask: Yes, you can watch this entire workout on YouTube and yes, I want to now do it every morning, even though I’m not a silver fox myself. 

But I digress — what I want to talk about is this fantastic 10-minute interview between Westheimer and Simmons, because watching it, it’s so clear that despite being two decades apart, despite one being born in pre-WWII Germany and the other in New Orleans, despite their different areas of expertise and differing fashion sensibilities, with him in an unusually subdued but very festive all-white suit and her in a dress and pearls, they’re cut from the same cloth.

Maybe it’s because they both had Jewish mothers. Ruth broaches this topic early on in their conversation, when Richard divulges that he was baptized as Milton Simmons. “Baptized, I thought you were Jewish!” Ruth exclaims. While Richard chides her for changing the topic, and Ruth waves him off by saying that’s just how interviews with her work (she is a Jewish mom, after all), Simmons explains his Jewish background:

 “I am Jewish, but I didn’t find out I was Jewish until I was 19. I was raised Catholic in New Orleans because my mother who was Jewish wanted to go into show business to be a Follies girl. And when she left to become a Follies girl they disowned her, and then she kind of pulled back on her religious feelings and she married a Catholic. And then I was raised Catholic because in New Orleans there are only like two Jewish people and they own New Orleans," he said, ending with an unadvisable Jewish joke, which Ruth moves on from right away (it isn’t Simmons’ first faux-pas in the interview, but Ruth is magnanimous about them all). 

They talk a lot about his mom, who like Dr. Ruth, is a diminutive and spunky Jewish lady. “If you tease your hair you’d be her height,” he quipped; she was 4’10 to Westheimer’s 4’7.

After making a joke about his mother shoplifting (Simmons was always extra like that) he fondly admits, “We're very close and she's a super lady.” He talks about the pranks he still played on her, like how he once faked a kidnapping to make her come with him to Europe (“If you were my son I would never forgive you,” Ruth rightly asserts. I wouldn’t forgive my son either, but maybe forgiving Richard Simmons is easier than that?!). He talks about how he created the Silver Foxes workout in fact to help his mother, because after the death of his father, she took on baking with a vengeance and gained some undesired weight. He also talked about how he made her get a new wardrobe by lying to a salesperson about her losing all her clothes in a house fire. 

Where did she put this new wardrobe? Well, Simmons says, “I built her a nice house.” He then makes yet another unintentional faux-pas when he asks Dr. Ruth if she does nice things for her loved ones, and if her parents are still around.

“I was an orphan,” Westheimer, who lost both her parents in the Holocaust, says, and then chides him with an “everybody who listens to the show knows it.” But she quickly moves on from that to do what a Jewish mother does best — kvell about her “two magnificent children,” for whom she loves doing nice things. 

The two spend a moment talking about Ruth’s field, as Simmons shares, "I think that the people who enjoy a very good sexual activity are those that have had some respect for their bodies.” 

But my favorite part is when Westheimer gets a bit personal with Richard, asking him if he ever expected to be as successful as he became. 

“I've been like this since I was a kid, just like you've been the way you are since you were a kid. We need to have people around us, and we have a Joan of Arc complex; we enjoy helping people," he says, and it seems like he really does have her number. It made me remember a moment from the 2018 “Ask Dr. Ruth” documentary in which she talks about how as a child, on the train from Germany to Switzerland, where her grandmother and mother sent her on a Kindertransport after her father was arrested by the Nazis, she cheered up all the other anxious children by breaking out into songs — singing Jewish songs, German songs, kids’ classics, knowing immediately what would assuage their souls. Both Westheimer and Simmons exemplified a “joie de vivre” and, as Richards says in the interview, they both "bust [their] chops” to “really make this world a better place to live in.”

It has been a while since both Simmons and Westheimer were TV smash hits, and their advice from back then sometimes feels dated and off in these days of Esther Perel and anti-diet nutritionists, but in them is also an essence of truth that still bears repeating to this day. Ruth pushed against the double standard about women and sexual pleasure, furthered the idea that so much of sex is about what goes on in your head, not your body. And Simmons stressed the concept of movement as joyous. They both asserted that all bodies and people are deserving of respect, love and fun. 

But more than that, they were both a reminder that there is a reward for daring to be your authentic, very extra self — even if it makes people gasp or feel uncomfortable. Because the benefits of healing the world with that spark — what we Jews call tikkun olam — much outweigh the risks. May their memories be for a blessing.

P.S. Did you know that Dr. Ruth almost had her own sitcom? The 1990 “Dr. Ruth’s House,” about the doctor turning her house into a kind of makeshift dorm for the college students she teaches, never went past the pilot (likely not because of the ethical concerns this poses but because it just… wasn’t very good). But you can watch said pilot right now on YouTube. While the show is, again, not great, it does feature Liz Sheridan, who would go on to play Helen Seinfeld (aka Jerry’s mom). The pilot is all about a fat character, Rhino Rineblat, not being attractive enough to get a date for the dance (sigh). Dr. Ruth thankfully disagrees with this premise, telling Rhino that "big is beautiful," though "not as beautiful as very small,” referring not to weight but to her 4’7 stature. Simmons might have agreed. 

Were you a Dr. Ruth and/or Richard Simmons fan? Let us know in the comments!