'Dr. Ruth' Westheimer dies at 96 after decades of frank advice about sex

“Dr. Ruth” Westheimer, the diminutive sexpert whose heavy German accent and straight talk about sex on radio and TV brought frank discussion about relationships into American pop-culture, has died. She was 96.

Known as "Dr. Ruth" for her books and radio and TV appearances, Westheimer died at her home Friday in New York City. It was announced Saturday by her frequent co-author and spokesman Pierre Lehu, who confirmed her death to USA TODAY.

"She was restful when she passed away," Lehu told People. "Her son and daughter were with her and holding her hand at that moment. ... It was as peacefully as she could possibly go."

Indefatigable until the end, Westheimer, who escaped the Nazis as a child in her native Germany, was writing and posting on social media about the many things that interested her as recently as last month.

"When I was younger I both skied and water skied so yes, I would have tried," she wrote on a June 27 post on X about a video of a woman sliding down a sand dune. "Maybe even last year at age 95!"

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Dr. Ruth shared sex advice for young people

In a sit-down with USA TODAY to promote a 2019 theatrical documentary about her, "Ask Dr. Ruth," she said she had some advice for the growing number of young people who say they're too busy, stressed or cash-strapped to go on dates.

"Don't be stupid. Make sure that you have time for sex," she implored. "Here is an activity that is so enjoyable and it's free. Make sure you have a relationship, and don't fall into the category of people who have lost the art of conversation."

She published three books in 2018 alone, and in January 2019 attended the documentary's premiere at Sundance Film Festival, where it received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics.

The film explores how Westheimer's tragic past shaped her into the joyfully candid and tenacious woman she became.  

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Dr. Ruth on social media

Her entertaining X account is peppered with her perky posts, reflecting her upbeat, positive personality. 

"#FirstSnow and I'm staying home. Was supposed to go to party for new book but can't go. A little because I'm 90 and afraid of falling and a lot because no cars are available!" she wrote merrily from her trademark handle, @AskDrRuth, in November 2018. In between posting admiring comments on art she saw at galleries or enthusing about the possibilities of enjoying oral sex more in old age, she was plugging a Holocaust book about the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, "Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom."

"I don't plug many books but this one is important to me," she declared in a video clip. 

Her devotion to truth and history helped her overcome her initial reluctance to cooperate with the documentary (by filmmaker Ryan White), especially given her desire to keep work and family separate. 

Westheimer eventually warmed to the project as a way to share her refugee experience with others, but also to "tell Holocaust deniers to stop denying the Holocaust," she said. "There are people who say: 'Look, that happened so long ago. Stop talking about it.' So I have to combat that." 

To the end, Westheimer championed the benefits of remaining active even in old age. Boredom can be fatal, she preached.

"I'm really fortunate that I'm healthy and I love what I'm doing," she told USA TODAY. "I tell older people not to retire, but to rewire: They don't have to stay in the same profession that they are and can do something else. But don't sit home and be bored."

Dr. Ruth kept her personal life personal

Westheimer was always private about her personal life, including her three marriages. She was a bit coy with USA TODAY in 2019 about whether she was dating ("Next question," she says, laughing). 

Her third and final marriage, in 1961, was to Fred Westheimer, which she called her “real marriage.” It lasted until his death in 1997.

But she spoke fondly of her two grown children and four grandkids, with whom she spent any free time at home in New York. 

"I'm the proudest – write that in big letters – of my terrific four grandchildren, even when they beat me in chess," Westheimer said. "Mostly I take them to dinners or a show. I'm not a grandma who bakes cookies."

How Dr. Ruth came to fame

Westheimer, who had lived in New York since moving there from France in 1956, first gained fame in the 1980s (when she was in her early 50s) for publicly discussing explicit sexual advice that, experts say, had previously been taboo. As such, she was an influential, if improbable, force in helping to dispel the last vestiges of sex-phobic puritanism from American culture. 

She was first noticed in 1980 when she delivered a lecture to New York broadcasters about the need for sex-education programming to help deal with issues of contraception and unwanted pregnancies.

That led to a radio talk-show on WYNY-FM called "Sexually Speaking," which was such a hit it went on to national syndication and helped anoint Westheimer as a nationally recognized authority on sexual matters.

She “opened up a dialogue about sex in a country that was pretty closed-minded about having a dialogue about sex, which is no easy feat,” said sexuality educator Debby Herbenick of The Kinsey Institute, a sex-research group at Indiana University in Bloomington.

“People were so open to her persona. She was able to be on the radio and be on TV and have this large cultural presence that made an indomitable topic of conversation more comfortable – and even fun,” Herbenick said.

Dr. Ruth tells USA TODAY about her legacy

In an interview with USA TODAY in 2013, Westheimer discussed her legacy.

“I want people to know that I had the chutzpah − the nerve − to talk about subject matters that were not discussed before,” she said.

In that interview, just before turning 85, Westheimer spoke of being “fortunate to be in good health” and with an informal fitness routine.

“I don’t exercise, but I have a massage once a week. I do walk a lot. I don’t sit. I walk and I talk,” she says.

Although just 4-foot-7, Westheimer’s national prominence was large, from guest spots on late night TV to the cover of People. Although she was somewhat less visible in her later years, she did not retire.

Westheimer adapted to the times, talking about issues such as masturbation on her own YouTube channel and posting to her more than 113,000 X followers.

Even before social media, she was ubiquitous in the rest of the media: In the 1980s and 1990s, she made appearances on TV shows ("Hollywood Squares" and "Quantum Leap"), on recordings (Tom Chapin's album "This Pretty Planet"), and even in commercials (a 1994 Honda Prelude ad).

In 2009, she was in the 55th anniversary issue of Playboy magazine as Number 13 in the list of the 55 most important people in sex from the previous 55 years. There was even a one-act play about her life, "Becoming Dr. Ruth," that ran for a few months Off Broadway in 2013 and in 2021 was featured at Theater J in Washington, D.C.    

And she kept writing books. Numbers 43, 44 and 45 were published in 2018: "Stay or Go: Dr. Ruth's Rules for Real Relationships" with Pierre A. Lehu, in January; "Roller Coaster Grandma" with Lehu in February; and "From You to Two" with Lehu in June.

One of her most recent books is "Heavenly Sex: Sexuality and the Jewish Tradition," published in paperback in 2020 with Jonathan Mark as a co-author.

At heart, Westheimer was a teacher: She taught at Lehman College, Brooklyn College, Adelphi University, Columbia University and even West Point. In April 2018, she was in her third year teaching at Columbia University Teachers College, where she got her teaching doctorate in 1970.

Longtime associate Maurice Tunick, a vice president at SiriusXM Satellite Radio in New York, worked on Westheimer's "Sexually Speaking" show in 1980. “I like to say I knew her before she was Dr. Ruth,” he said in the 2013 interview with USA TODAY.

“‘Approachable’ is a great word for her,” he said. “She’ll be remembered for her ability to communicate with people.”

Dr. Ruth's childhood, background as a sniper

Westheimer became famous talking about sex but her background, though less known, is also noteworthy. Born in Germany as Karola Ruth Siegel, she was sent in 1939 at age 10 by her family to an orphanage in Switzerland, where other Jewish children were sent to escape the Nazi regime.

At 16, she moved to Palestine, where she was trained as a sniper in the Haganah, the forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces. She was wounded in the 1948 War of Independence and after recovering, moved to Paris, where she studied psychology at the Sorbonne. 

Her son, Joel Westheimer, a professor of education at the University of Ottawa in Canada, attributes his mother’s success to hitting on a topic that no one else was discussing at the time.

“She was a pioneer in that way. She did it in a way that was not threatening to anyone. It probably helped that she had a German accent and wasn’t a 23-year-old," he said.

"The combination of her accent and her size and the way she talked about things let people take their guard down,” he added. “She’s really smart and the answers she gave were both common-sense and insightful. They were funny, but they were always serious at the same time.”

Her daughter, Miriam Westheimer, who works in international education in New York, says her mother’s attitude was always based on the here-and-now.

“You don’t know what tomorrow brings, so make every moment worthwhile,” she says of her mother’s credo.

Contributing:Amanda Lee Myers, Mike Snider and, Patrick Ryan