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NEW YORK — Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the diminutive sex therapist who became a pop icon, media star and best-selling author through her frank talk about once-taboo bedroom topics, died. She was 96.

Westheimer died Friday at her New York City home, surrounded by her family, according to publicist and friend Pierre Lehu.

Westheimer never advocated risky sexual behavior. Instead, she encouraged an open dialogue on previously closeted issues that affected her audience of millions.

Her recurring theme: there’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Dr. Ruth Westheimer participates in the “Ask Dr. Ruth” panel Feb. 11, 2019, during the Hulu presentation at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour at The Langham Huntington in Pasadena, Calif.

“I still hold old-fashioned values and I’m a bit of a square,” she told students at Michigan City High School in 2002. “Sex is a private art and a private matter. But still, it is a subject we must talk about.”

Westheimer’s giggly, German-accented voice, coupled with her 4-foot-7 frame, made her an unlikely looking — and sounding — outlet for “sexual literacy.” The contradiction was one of the keys to her success.

Her extensive knowledge and training, coupled with her humorous, nonjudgmental manner, catapulted her radio program, “Sexually Speaking,” into the national spotlight in the early 1980s.

She had a nonjudgmental approach to what two consenting adults did in the privacy of their home.

“Tell him you’re not going to initiate,” she told a concerned caller in June 1982. “Tell him that Dr. Westheimer said that you’re not going to die if he doesn’t have sex for one week.”

Dr. Ruth Westheimer holds a copy of her book "Sex for Dummies" on Oct. 11, 2007, at the International Frankfurt Book Fair "Frankfurter Buchmesse: in Frankfurt, Germany.

Her radio success opened new doors, and in 1983 she wrote the first of more than 40 books: “Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex,” demystifying sex with both rationality and humor. There was even a board game, Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex.

She soon became a regular on the late-night television talk-show circuit, bringing her personality to the national stage. Her rise coincided with the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when frank sexual talk became a necessity.

“If we could bring about talking about sexual activity the way we talk about diet — the way we talk about food — without it having this kind of connotation that there’s something not right about it, then we would be a step further. But we have to do it with good taste,” she told Johnny Carson in 1982.

She normalized the use of words like “penis” and “vagina” on radio and TV, aided by her Jewish grandmotherly accent, which The Wall Street Journal once said was “a cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse.”

People magazine included her in their list of “The Most Intriguing People of the Century.” She even made it into a Shania Twain song: “No, I don’t need proof to show me the truth/Not even Dr. Ruth is gonna tell me how I feel.”

Westheimer defended abortion rights, suggested older people have sex after a good night’s sleep and was an outspoken advocate of condom use. She believed in monogamy.

In the 1980s, she stood up for gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic and spoke out loudly for the LGBTQ community. She said she defended people deemed by some far-right Christians to be “subhuman” because of her own past.

Born Karola Ruth Siegel in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1928, she was an only child. At 10, she was sent by her parents to Switzerland to escape Kristallnacht — the Nazis’ 1938 pogrom that served as a precursor to the Holocaust. She never saw her parents again; Westheimer believed they were killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

At age 16, she moved to Palestine and joined the Haganah, the underground movement for Israeli independence. She was trained as a sniper, though she said she never shot at anyone.

Her legs were severely wounded when a bomb exploded in her dormitory, killing many of her friends. She said it was only through the work of a “superb” surgeon that she could walk and ski again.

She married her first husband, an Israeli soldier, in 1950, and they moved to Paris as she pursued an education. Though not a high school graduate, Westheimer was accepted into the Sorbonne to study psychology after passing an entrance exam.

The marriage ended in 1955; the next year, Westheimer went to New York with her new boyfriend, a Frenchman who became her second husband and father to her daughter, Miriam.

In 1961, after a second divorce, she met Manfred Westheimer, a fellow refugee from Nazi Germany. The couple married and had a son, Joel. They remained wed for 36 years until “Fred” — as she called him — died of heart failure in 1997.

After receiving her doctorate in education from Columbia University, she taught at Lehman College in the Bronx. There, she developed a specialty: instructing professors how to teach sex education.

Westheimer then decided take classes with the renowned sex therapist Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan. She discovered her calling; soon, she said, she was dispensing sexual advice “like good chicken soup.”

Sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer, left, talks with rock singer Cyndi Lauper on Jan. 17, 1985, in New York.

In 1984, her radio program was nationally syndicated. A year later, she debuted in her own television program, “The Dr. Ruth Show,” which went on to win an Ace Award for excellence in cable television.

She also wrote a nationally syndicated advice column and appeared in videos produced by Playboy. She even had a series of calendars.

Westheimer appeared on shows including “The Tonight Show,” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” “The Dr. Oz Show” and “Late Night with David Letterman.” She played herself in episodes of “Quantum Leap” and “Love Boat: The Next Wave.”

Her books include “Sex for Dummies,” her autobiographical works “All in a Lifetime” (1987) and “Musically Speaking: A Life through Song” (2003). The documentary “Ask Dr. Ruth” aired in 2019.

She remained committed to teaching, with posts at several universities and a busy college lecture schedule. She also maintained a private practice.

She is survived by two children, Joel and Miriam, and four grandchildren.

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