LOS ANGELES — Richard Simmons, the flamboyant fitness guru whose relentless energy and sequined shorts made him a fixture of American television for decades, was living a double life that the public never knew about, according to a comprehensive account of his life and final years that emerged following his death in July 2024 at his Hollywood Hills home, just one day after his 76th birthday.

For millions of Americans, the most puzzling aspect of Simmons’ life was not his death but the nearly decade-long disappearance that preceded it. A man who had once appeared everywhere on television had simply vanished, sparking a national mystery that podcasts, paparazzi, and television programs chased for years without finding satisfactory answers.

Some believed he was being controlled inside his own home. Others thought he had suffered a mental collapse. But behind those rumors was a man very different from the colorful image the public had once known — an overweight boy from New Orleans who had been bullied so severely that he was afraid to enter the school restroom, a person who once destroyed his own body just to escape the shame he felt about his weight.

Richard Simmons built his entire career from the very things that had once made him feel most ashamed. At a time when America’s fitness industry was filled with perfect bodies and workouts designed for people who were already fit, he stood among overweight people, older people, and those who had already given up on themselves. Millions loved him not only because he got them moving, but because for the first time, someone had stepped onto the stage without making them feel ashamed before asking them to begin changing.

Born Milton Teagle Simmons on July 12, 1948, in New Orleans, he grew up in the French Quarter where music, tourists, laughter, and small stages seemed to exist on nearly every street corner. His father had once worked as an MC before working in second-hand stores, while his mother was a fan dancer before later selling cosmetics. No one in the family was truly famous, but Richard grew up with the feeling that making other people happy was a necessary skill for survival.

The biggest problem in Richard’s life arrived almost at the same time as childhood itself. He began eating uncontrollably at around 4 or 5 years old and quickly became the heaviest child in his class. Richard would later remember very clearly the feeling of watching people laugh when he walked into a room, the feeling of being called names and treated as an easy target for bullying at his Catholic school.

There was a period when he was afraid to go into the school restroom because he thought someone was waiting inside to continue mocking him. By the age of 15, Richard weighed around 83 kilograms, a very high number for a teenager at that time, and later his weight would reach about 122 kilograms. What is striking is that Richard did not fight back with violence or rebellion.

He learned how to make others laugh before they could laugh at him, turning himself into the class clown who always spoke louder than normal and always tried to stir up the crowd.

In the late 1960s, Richard Simmons went to Italy to study art through a student exchange program. For Richard, it felt like the first time he had stepped out from under the shadow of the overweight boy from New Orleans. He appeared in small roles in films by director Federico Fellini, such as Satyricon and The Clowns.

Moving among film crews, long European-style meals, and the feeling that he might finally belong somewhere, Richard almost forgot that his body had once been the thing that made him most ashamed.

Then one night, everything changed because of a small note left on his car. It read: “You are very funny, but fat people die young. Please don’t die.”

Richard remembered that sentence for the rest of his life. Before that moment, he wanted to lose weight in order to be liked, to be laughed at less, and to look more like the normal people around him. After that night, losing weight turned into an obsession with survival.

The following years became an extreme war between Richard and his own body. He tried every possible method to force the weight to disappear, from diet pills and dangerous eating plans to near total starvation. At one point, Richard lost more than 100 pounds in about two and a half months — so quickly that his skin turned gray, his hair began falling out, and his body became severely depleted.

One day, he collapsed in the street and woke up in a hospital when his body was almost no longer strong enough to function normally.

When he moved to New York, he fell into bulimia after learning from a colleague how to eat and then vomit all the food back out. Richard entered a cycle of shame, self-hatred, and eating disorders for many consecutive years. Sometimes gaining weight, sometimes losing weight, sometimes falling into despair because he thought he would never escape that body.

In 1974, Richard Simmons opened his first studio in Beverly Hills under the name The Anatomy Asylum. At first, the place did not only have workout classes, but also a salad bar called Ruffage, reflecting very clearly how Richard viewed weight loss after many years of destroying his body with diet pills, starvation, and all kinds of extreme diets. He did not want to turn health and exercise into a punishment or a prolonged form of torture like what he himself had experienced.

The atmosphere inside the studio was almost completely opposite to California’s fitness culture at the time. Richard welcomed overweight people, older people, men, women, and even those who had never thought they were confident enough to appear in a workout room. While many gyms in Los Angeles were filled with large mirrors, toned bodies, and a hidden sense of competition among students, Richard’s classes were noisy, awkward, and full of people trying to breathe along to the rhythm of disco music.

In 1980, Richard Simmons launched his own television program called The Richard Simmons Show, marking the biggest turning point in his career up to that point. The show was built around a combination that was very unusual for American television in the early 1980s. It included exercise, cooking, conversation, and emotional encouragement right on air.

The Richard Simmons Show aired from 1980 to 1984 and won four Daytime Emmy Awards during its run.

In 1988, Richard Simmons released Sweatin’ to the Oldies and almost completely changed the familiar image of exercise videos in America. At that time, the fitness market was dominated by nearly perfect bodies, high-intensity workouts, and the feeling that only beautiful people had the right to appear in front of the camera. Richard did almost the exact opposite.

He stood among overweight people, middle-aged people, older people, and bodies that did not look like any Hollywood fitness advertisement of that era.

The entire series later brought in more than $200 million in revenue and sold more than 20 million workout tapes, becoming one of the most successful fitness video lines in American history. Richard Simmons went from being an instructor in Beverly Hills to a face appearing in millions of living rooms across America.

But behind those numbers was still the same familiar image. The overweight boy who had once been excluded from standards of appearance was now standing in the middle of the TV screen shouting to people like himself that they did not need to be perfect in order to join that party.

Throughout his life, Richard Simmons never married and had no children. Across decades of appearing in public, he almost never spoke clearly about his sexuality or tried to explain speculation surrounding his private life. Many years later, when asked why he never started a family, Richard compared himself to a priest who had devoted his entire life to his mission.

He said his fans were his family.

The person who stayed closest to Richard the longest was ultimately Teresa Reveles. Teresa began working for him in 1988 and remained by Richard’s side for almost the rest of his life. The very first time they met, Richard told her, “You will never leave here.”

At the time, that sentence sounded like the familiar emotional excess of Richard Simmons, but many years later, it almost became completely true.

They lived in the same house, ate together, traveled together, and stayed beside each other for more than three decades. The relationship between Richard and Teresa always made the public curious because it was both very intimate and not like the traditional definition of love. Teresa later said Richard kissed her every day, wrote love letters to her, and almost did not want to live away from her even for a short time.

But she also insisted that the relationship was not sexual.

In 2014, Richard Simmons suddenly disappeared from public life almost completely. He stopped appearing on television, ended his classes at Slimmons, and cut off contact with many people who had been close to him for years. At first, many people thought Richard was simply resting after decades of working almost non-stop.

But as the months passed and he still did not appear, curiosity began turning into genuine concern.

In 2016, Slimmons officially closed almost without any public goodbye from Richard Simmons. That made the sense of mystery around him grow even larger. Not long after, a series of conspiracy theories began exploding across American media.

Some believed Richard was being kept inside his house. Some claimed he was transitioning, and others thought he had suffered a mental breakdown or was being manipulated by the people around him.

The podcast Missing Richard Simmons appeared and quickly turned Richard’s disappearance into a national mystery. The pressure from public attention became so intense that in 2017, the Los Angeles Police Department had to go directly to Richard’s home to conduct a welfare check. After meeting him, the LAPD confirmed that Richard was completely safe and showed no sign of being held against his will.

The truth only gradually emerged later from the people closest to Richard. He had undergone double knee replacement, lived with long-term chronic pain, and almost no longer had the physical ability to teach aerobic classes the way he once had. But for Richard Simmons, being unable to move as before was not only a health problem.

It struck at the very image that had defined his life for decades.

Teresa Reveles said Richard repeatedly told her that he did not want audiences to see that aging, slower body anymore. Once, he told her, “I don’t look as beautiful as I used to.” The sentence sounded simple, but it almost explained the entire final 10 years of Richard Simmons’s life.

The man who had once lived among disco music, television lights, and thousands of people dancing along with him began to fear stepping out before the public.

In early 2024, everything began changing in an unexpected direction. Richard started appearing on social media more often, replying to fans, and for the first time in years, beginning to speak seriously about returning to the public. He gave an interview to People magazine, said he was writing a Broadway musical project about his own life, and proactively called Diane Sawyer to discuss a major interview.

The people who spoke with Richard during that time all felt that he truly wanted to return to the outside world after nearly a decade of disappearance.

But only a few days later, tragedy occurred. On July 11, 2024, Richard fell in the bathroom at his home in Los Angeles. Teresa urged him to go to the hospital immediately.

But Richard refused because he did not want to be in the hospital on his 76th birthday. He decided to wait until the next morning. During that time, Richard lay immobile for many hours after the fall without receiving timely medical treatment.

The next day, Teresa walked into the bedroom and discovered that Richard Simmons had passed away. Just one day earlier, he had still posted a message thanking fans for his birthday wishes and saying he was grateful to be alive for one more day. The coroner’s report later confirmed that Richard died from complications from the fall with heart disease as a contributing factor.

There was no sign of foul play or any controlled substances in his body.

Even in his final moment, Richard Simmons’s family still wanted him to be remembered exactly as the public had loved him for decades. Richard was buried in his familiar colorful workout outfit. His brother said the family wanted to make sure Richard was still wearing his usual outfit to help the angels stay in shape.

It was almost the only kind of ending that suited Richard Simmons — sad, strange, full of emotion, yet still trying to make everyone smile one last time.

Richard Simmons’s legacy does not lie in which workout he created or how many videotapes he sold. What made Richard different was that he changed how millions of Americans felt when they stepped into a room with mirrors. Before Richard Simmons, fitness on American television was largely tied to discipline, perfect bodies, and the feeling that people had to fix themselves in order to be accepted.

Richard appeared instead amid disco music, tears, and bodies that had never been considered beautiful enough for television.

Richard allowed bodies that had almost never appeared on American television at the time to stand right under the lights without first forcing them to feel ashamed. Overweight people, older people, those who were exercising while gasping for breath or crying halfway through stayed right there in the frame instead of being cut out like mistakes that needed to be hidden. Richard hugged them, cried with them, and talked about the years he had hated his own body right in the middle of fitness programs that usually only talked about calories and discipline.

Perhaps that is why so many people remember Richard Simmons not as an ordinary instructor, but as someone who made them feel for the first time that they could still appear in a crowd without first having to become a more perfect version of themselves. The numbers surrounding Richard’s career were still large enough to become a phenomenon of their own — more than 20 million workout tapes sold, Sweatin’ to the Oldies bringing in more than $200 million in revenue, and The Richard Simmons Show winning four Daytime Emmy Awards.

But behind all of that remained the image of a man who spent hours calling strangers just to tell them not to give up for one more day. Even people who had mocked Richard Simmons for years later admitted that it was very hard to find anyone else in American show business who had truly given as much emotional energy as he did.

Richard Simmons did not become an icon because he was perfect. He became an icon because audiences saw someone carrying almost all of their own insecurities into the spotlight, yet still continuing to dance, continuing to laugh, and continuing to try to pull other people back to their feet with him. From the overweight boy in New Orleans who was afraid to step into the school restroom to the man who disappeared behind the gates of his Los Angeles mansion, decades later, Richard had almost never truly escaped the fear of being seen.

But it was precisely that fear that helped him understand people who felt hopeless about their bodies better than almost anyone else on American television. Perhaps the image that explains Richard Simmons most clearly lies in his final years — a man who had once lived among thousands of audience members was now feeding squirrels and skunks in his yard, continuing to call fans to encourage them, and fearing that the public would see him growing older.

Even after nearly 10 years of disappearance, America did not forget Richard Simmons. Because behind the sequined shorts, the curly hair, and that almost chaotic source of energy was a man who had spent nearly his entire life trying to make people who had been shamed for their bodies feel that they were still worthy of appearing in this world.