Her syndicated column, Ask Dr. Ruth, runs in hundreds of newspapers. Over the years, she's had Sunday night radio and TV call-in shows, and has written more than two dozen books.
On November 25, 2003, that Jewish, New York-based psychosexual therapist lived up to her reputation for candor at Winnipeg's Centennial Concert Hall. During her lecture, the first in the My Life Our Times - The Interactive Series - Westheimer outlined her approach to sexual counselling, fielded questions from the audience and cracked jokes that kept the crowd howling with laughter.
"The Talmud says, a lesson taught with humor is a lesson retained," the Frankfurt, Germany-born 75 year old began. "I hear jokes every day. I can't remember them, but I use humor."
Westheimer, who's also famous for her gutteral German accent and deep voice, then cited another quote from "Jewish tradition" to make her next point - with humor.
"If you stand on the shoulders of giants, you can see farther. I'm only 4'7", so that's very important." Westheimer has a doctorate in education from Columbia University, and still runs a private practice in New York, where she offers short-term "behavior therapy".
But her main cause in the public arena is "sexual literacy".
"All of us here come from backgrounds where the Victorian mother told the daughter, the night after the wedding ceremony: 'Lie back and think of England,'" she told the women in the crowd with a twinkle in her eyes, as a big screen behind her magnified her face for the crowd.
"The attitude was, 'You have to do it, survive it and make the best of it.'"
Over the decades, she's done what she can to change that viewpoint, and explain to people how to enjoy and improve their sex lives.
Westheimer believes "sexual literacy" has to start "when a child is being born." Very often, babysitters calling her TV show ask: "What should I do? He's three years old, in the living room, touching himself there."
"I'm not saying you should say to a child sitting in front of the television, 'How wonderful that you masturbate.' I'm saying sex is and ought to remain a private matter. This is something to be done in the privacy of the bathroom or bedroom.'"
Westheimer added, however, that the longheld Judeo-Christian view that masturbation is sinful stems partly from a misreading of the Bible.
"In English, another term for masturbation is 'onanism'." In Hebrew, the term is "leh-ohnayn".
In fact, Onan, a son of Judah from whom those terms are derived, "didn't masturbate." Judah ordered him to marry his dead brother's widow, make her pregnant, and raise the child, as if it were his brother's.
"Onan disobeyed." He slept with his brother's widow, but engaged in what today would be called "coitus interruptus", Westheimer said.
(He "spilled" his "seed" "on the ground" to keep her from getting pregnant - Genesis, Chapter 38, Verse 9.)
Westheimer's parents sent her in 1938 to a boarding school in Switzerland, to save her from the growing Nazi threat.
She was the only member of her immediate family to survive the Holocaust.
Having grown up in "Nazi GermanyŠI learned you have to stand up and be counted."
That particularly applies to issues like birth control.
In 2003, Westheimer said, there are far fewer "unintended pregnancies" in the world, because people openly talk about contraceptives and where they're available.
As for abortion, she insists that "must be legal" - not as a contraceptive, but when there is "contraceptive failure."
Westheimer proved more cautious, during a question-and-answer session with the audience, about some other sex-related topics.
Asked at what age it's okay for parents to leave teenagers and their friends of the opposite sex alone, "without parental supervision", Westheimer said that depends on the "morals and values" of that particular family.
"I believe when there are parties for younger teenagers, there should be chaperones."
If they're older, it depends on "that teenager's maturity."
She advises parents, however, not to "interrogate" their older teenagers in detail about their sexual experiences.
"I believe you should show respect for their privacy."
Westheimer said she's not trying to dictate when people should become "sexually active".
In fact, she comes from a conservative family background, and when it comes to public discussion of sexual fantasies, "I'm an old-fashioned square."
If somebody had told her decades ago she's be talking to an audience in Winnipeg some day about sex, she'd have replied: "You must be kidding."
Her first job was teaching Kindergarten in New York City.
Needing more money, she found work with Planned Parenthood, an organization that advocates birth control.
"At first I thought, there must be something wrong with these people. All they talk about is sex. Forty-eight hours later, I decided, aThat's a very interesting subject.'"
She went back to university, and trained to become a sex therapist. Her media career began when she was invited to be a guest on a New York radio show on sexual relations.
That led to a 15-minute radio show of her own, and in 1981, a live, hour-long call-in show, where she answered questions from listeners; today, she presides over an empire that ranges from games to live lectures.
Westheimer, a widow, has two children, one of whom lives in Ottawa, and four grandchildren. She tries to keep her career as separate as possible from her family life.
But during her appearance in Winnipeg, she admitted that's not always possible, and at least once, it led to a joke - at her expense.
Years ago, U.S. TV news show anchor Diane Sawyer interviewed her in her New York home. Westheimer's late husband, Frank, was there, and "I didn't have the heart to tell Frank, 'You can't be home.'"
Sawyer turned to Mr. Westheimer and posed her first question: "Mr. Westheimer, how is your sex life?"
His answer: "The shoemaker's children don't have shoes."
How has Dr. Ruth maintained her sense of humor despite separation from her parents at age 10, and their deaths in the Holocaust?
She had a simple answer for The Jewish Post & News, as she autographed copies of her books after her lecture: "In the first 10 years of my life, I was in a wonderful, loving atmosphere. I was an only child in Frankfurt, with parents and a grandmother living with us. The first 10 years are very important in somebody's life."
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