Richard Simmons has personally impacted the lives of many of his fans.
The late fitness icon who tragically died after falling on July 13.A day after his 76th birthday, he was calling and emailing hundreds of fans even in his final days, he revealed in a post on his personal Facebook page. Last interview with people.
Fans from across the country tell The Post that the sunny exercise instructor’s personal involvement in their lives has really made a difference and saved them from tragedy.
“He helped my sister through a dark time,” Oceanside, New York-born wedding singer Beth Mousekopf, 66, told The Post.
She first met Simmons in 1979 at a fitness class in Los Angeles and said she talked to him about her overweight sister Joan’s battle with depression years later.
“I wrote to him and told him the situation and said, ‘I can’t help her. Can you call her?’ And he called her. [my sister] “He encouraged her. He told her, ‘Day by day, you deserve something.’” “As soon as Richard called her, she felt like he lifted her spirits,” she said, noting that her fitness idol had saved lives.
“Richard taught the world to focus on how far you have come rather than how far you have to go,” she said.
Simmons gained fame in the 1980s as a fitness trainer through his televised exercise routines and the popular 1988 exercise tape “Sweatin’ to the Oldies.”
He also appeared on television shows such as “General Hospital” between 1979 and 1982, and talk and radio shows such as “Late Show with David Letterman” and “The Howard Stern Show.”
In 2014, the New Orleans native, who struggled with weight issues as a child, withdrew from the public eye and stopped teaching fitness classes.
After the very active star went into hiding for a while, it sparked the podcast “Missing Richard Simmons” in 2017, which investigated his new hermit-like life.
In March, Simmons told fans in a Facebook post that he had been diagnosed with skin cancer. His death is under investigation after he fell in his bathroom on Friday night.
Despite his retreat from the spotlight, Simmons has never stopped helping his fans.
“I know people miss me. And you know what? I miss them, too. But I’m able to reach them through phone calls and emails. I leave the house sometimes,” he told People magazine, revealing, “We’ll probably answer 100-plus emails.” [in a day]”.”
Mauskopf, who credits Simmons’ eating-control system with helping her personally lose 30 pounds, told The Post that the exercise guru brought hope to her older sister, Joan. Together, they followed Simmons’s guidance.
“Joan was depressed and filled her emptiness with overeating. She slowly followed the Deal a Meal program, and although it took more than a year to lose weight, she finally achieved her goal,” she told The Post.
“He encouraged us to understand that eating is a way of life, not a lifestyle.” [and] “… Above all, love yourself.”
Others, like Christine McKay, 45, a South Carolina native who works with animals, took part in Simmons’ “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” and trained with her mother when she was 12 and weighed just over 200 pounds.
With his bubbly personality, Simmons made her feel light at an event in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she waited in line for two hours and told him about being bullied for her appearance at school.
“He said to me, ‘Why did you wait so long in line to see me today?’ I said, ‘Because you’re a nice person and you make me want to exercise – maybe if I exercise people will be nice because I’ll lose weight.
He looked at me with tears in his eyes and told me I was beautiful and valuable, and ‘don’t forget that, miss,’ the mother of two said.
“Something like this doesn’t leave you alone,” she told The Post. “I’m still suffering.”
“He taught me more about self-love than most people. He was a kind person.”
Although Simmons has not publicly discussed his sexual orientation, he has helped others, like Jeremy Belser, 51, a barber from the Bronx who grew up in Ridgefield, New Jersey, find the courage to come out as a teenager.
At that time, when he was in high school in the 1980s, he weighed 287 pounds.
“I was gay from a very young age. When I first saw Richard Simmons on ‘Real People’ wearing a sequined undershirt, really short shorts, sneakers and tights, he really stood out from anyone I knew at the time,” Belser told The Post.
“He was like the Elton John of fitness. Being overweight, being gay, and being someone who was really happy helped me start feeling comfortable in my own skin,” Belser told The Post of coming out at 17.
Meanwhile, Mauskopf has kept in touch with Simmons over the years. She sent him his famous fleet of Dalmatian dog bowls with their names and phone number on the bottom in the early 1990s, and she enjoyed the clam chowder recipe from his cookbook, Goodbye Fatness.
In 2000, when her home was burned and she lost some souvenirs, including her favorite Simmons VHS tapes, she wrote to the fitness icon, who sent her a care package containing an autographed photo.
“He sent me a package of things he thought I might have lost,” Moskow, who still has a Simmons doll attached to her treadmill, told The Post. “He took the time out of his life to call me.”
Moskov said she felt like she was grieving the loss of a dear friend, The Post reported.
“It was like he was talking to me when he spoke at the end of his videos,” she said. “He was inspiring you, and he really meant it.”