Richard Simmons personally touched the lives of many of his fans.
The late fitness icon, who tragically died after a fall on July 13, one day after his 76th birthday, was calling and emailing hundreds of fans even in his final days, he revealed in his last interview with People.
Admirers from around the country tell The Post the sunny aerobics instructor’s personal involvement in their lives really helped make a difference and saved them from tragedy.
“He helped my sister during a dark time,” wedding singer and Oceanside, New York, native Beth Mauskopf, 66, told The Post.
She first met Simmons in 1979 at his fitness class in Los Angeles and said she confided in 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] and encouraged her. He said, ‘One day at a time. You’re worth something.’ Once Richard called her it was as if she was lifted,” she said, noting that her fitness idol saved lives.
“Richard taught the world to focus on how far you’ve come rather than how far you have to go,” she said.
Simmons rose to fame in the 1980’s as a fitness instructor with his televised aerobics routines and landmark 1988 hit workout tape “Sweatin’ to the Oldies”.
He also made TV appearances on “General Hospital” between 1979 and 1982 and talk and radio shows like “Late Show with David Letterman” and “The Howard Stern Show.”
In 2014, the New Orleans native, who had struggled with weight issues himself as a kid, retreated from the public eye and stopped teaching his fitness classes.
After the once-very active star had conspicuously absent for a while, it sparked the podcast “Missing Richard Simmons” in 2017, which investigated his new hermit-like life.
This March, Simmons told fans in a Facebook post he had been diagnosed with skin cancer. After his reported fall in the bathroom of his home on Friday night, his death is under investigation.
Although he stepped back from the spotlight, Simmons never stopped helping his fans.
“I know people miss me. And you know what? I miss them, too. But I am able to reach them through phone calls and through emails. And I do leave the house sometimes,” he told People, revealing “most probably, we’ll answer over 100 emails [in a day].”
Mauskopf, who credits Simmons’ portion control weight loss system “Deal A Meal,” with helping her personally shed 30-pounds, told The Post the exercise guru brought hope to her older sister Joan. Together, they followed Simmons’ guidance.
“Joan was depressed and just filled her void by overeating. She slowly followed ‘Deal a Meal’ and although it took over a year to lose the weight, she finally met her goal,” she told The Post.
“He encouraged us to understand that eating food is a way to live and not a way of life [and] …. above all, love yourself.”
Others, like South Carolina native Christine McKay, 45, who works with animals, did Simmons’ “Sweatin’ to the Oldies,” workout with her mother when she was 12 and weighed just over 200 pounds.
Simmons, with his sparkly personality, made her feel lighter 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, ‘Why’d 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 worthy; and ‘don’t you forget it young lady,’” the mom of two said.
“Something like that doesn’t leave a person. I still struggle,” she told The Post.
“He taught me more about self-love than most people. He was just a good person.”
While Simmons didn’t publicly discuss his own sexuality, he helped others, like Jeremy Pelser, 51, a barber from The Bronx, who grew up in Ridgefield, New Jersey, find the courage to come out as a teen.
At the time, when he was in high school in the 80’s, he weighed 287 pounds.
“I was queer from a very young age. When I first saw Richard Simmons on ‘Real People’ in a sequined tank top and those really short shorts, sneakers and high socks he really stood out from anyone I knew at the time,” Pelser told The Post.
“He was like the Elton John of fitness. Being heavy, being queer and identifying with somebody who is really happy helped me start to feel comfortable in my own skin,” Pelser told The Post of coming out at 17.
Meanwhile, Mauskopf stayed in touch with Simmons over the years. She sent his famous fleet of Dalmatians dog bowls with their names inscribed and her phone number on the bottom in the early 1990’s, and would relish the clam chowder recipe from his “Farwell to Fat” cookbook.
In 2000, when she suffered a house fire and lost keepsakes, including her beloved Simmons VHS tapes, she wrote in to the fitness icon, who mailed her a care package with a signed photograph.
“He sent me a package of things he thought I might have lost. He took the time out of his life to call me,” Mauskopf, who still has a bobblehead of Simmons taped to her treadmill, told The Post.
Mauskopf said she feels like she’s mourning the loss of a dear friend, she told The Post.
“It was like he was talking to me when he spoke at the end of his videos,” she said. “He would inspire you, and he meant it.”
