Dr. Ruth, TV Sex Therapist, Dead at 96

The iconic sex therapist was a big part of pop culture in several ways.

By Andrew Roberts

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the sex therapist who became a staple in pop culture due to her "frank talk" and cheerful persona. The noted sex therapist died on Friday at her New York City home, surrounded by her family. Her death was confirmed by her publicist Pierre Lehu.

Westheimer broke through with her radio show in the early 1980s, Sexually Speaking. She wrote the first of her 40 books in 1983, with the Associated Press even singling out that she had a board game based on her profession eventually.

She also became a staple in late night television and fodder for jokes, even appearing on the dais at the Friar's Club roasts that aired on Comedy Central.

Prior to her claim to fame, she was born Karola Ruth Siegel in Frankfurt, Germany in 1928. She was an only child and sent away at age 10 to avoid the Nazi persecutions and pogroms against Jews that preceded the Holocaust. At 16 she moved to Palestine to join the underground Israeli independence movement at the time, training a sniper but claiming she never shot at anybody.

After one marriage to her first husband, an Israeli soldier in 1950, she moved to Paris to study psychology at the Sorbonne. Her marriage ended in 1955, opening the door for her to move to New York with her boyfriend and future husband that ended in divorce in 1961.

She met her final husband in 1961 in fellow German refugee Manfred Westheimer. They had one son, Joel, joining Dr. Ruth's daughter Miriam as her two children. She's survived by her two children and four grandchildren.

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