Ruth Westheimer: The sex expert, also known as “Dr. Ruth,” has died at the age of 96.

Ruth Westheimer, the psychologist “Dr. Ruth” who became America’s best-known sex therapist through her candid and funny radio and television programs, died Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 96.

“A talk show about sex? Why not,” he asked. “Why don’t we share some recipes on air. I’m promoting sex education in an age of unprecedented sexual freedom.”

Her death was announced by her representative, Pierre Lehoux.

Dr. Westheimer was in her mid-50s when she first appeared on the air in 1980, answering listeners’ mail-in questions about sex and relationships on New York radio station WYNY.

“He has passion”

The show, called “Sexually Talking,” was only a 15-minute segment that aired after midnight on Sundays. But it was such a hit that he quickly became a national media celebrity.

In the 1980s, she hosted live radio and television call-ins, wrote a column for Playgirl magazine, lent her name to a board game and its computer version, and began publishing guides on sexuality covering the range from educating young people to energizing older adults.

Students adored her, and her lectures on campus alone brought in a large income. She appeared in advertisements for cars, soft drinks, shampoo, typewriters, and condoms.

She even landed a role in the 1985 French film One or Two Women, starring Gerard Depardieu and Sigourney Weaver, which was released in the United States in 1987. “Dr. Ruth can never be considered an actress,” Janet Maslin wrote in her New York Times review, “but she has passion.”

Nowadays, it takes some effort to remember that Ruth Westheimer had a radical formula and a profound impact on social mores. Talk shows abounded in the 1980s, but until her, none of them dealt exclusively with sex and clinically. And no one could have predicted that the messenger of love would be a six-foot-tall middle-aged professor who would deliver a speech that the Wall Street Journal described as “something like a cross between Henry Kissinger and a canary.”

“A talk show about sex? Why not,” he asked. “Why don’t we share some recipes on air. I’m promoting sex education in an age of unprecedented sexual freedom.”

Of course, her recipes weren’t limited to the things you’d likely hear in a Sunday sermon.

*Information from: The New York Times | Main article image: Hulu