Dr. Ruth Westheimer, famous sex therapist and talk show host, dies at the age of 96

Andy Kropa

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the famed therapist and talk show host who became one of America’s best-known voices on sex, has died at the age of 96.

Westheimer died in her New York home on Friday, the sex guru’s spokesman confirmed to New York TimesNo cause of death was given.

Dr. Ruth’s unusual path to becoming America’s leading sex expert began in Nazi Germany—where she was born in 1928; both her parents were murdered in the Holocaust—to Israel, where she moved after World War II, to France, where she studied psychology, and finally to New York City, where, then in her forties, she worked under sex therapy pioneer Helen Singer Kaplan.

In his early 50s, Westheimer started the radio talk show Sexually speaking on WYNY in New York, where she covered a wide range of sexual topics that had previously been too taboo for broadcast. Although the show only aired weekly for 15 minutes on Sunday nights, within a year of its first broadcast it had a radio audience of a quarter of a million listeners. Soon after, it was broadcast to dozens of other radio stations nationwide, quickly making Dr. Ruth one of the most popular sex therapists in the country.

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