Howard Stern Wants to Do a ‘Serious Interview’ With Richard Simmons to ‘Get to the Bottom’ of His Private Life | Video

Howard Stern said on Monday that he’d love to have exercise guru Richard Simmons on his show to “get to the bottom” of why he dropped out of sight. But so far, Simmons has turned down his invites.

The “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” star, who hasn’t made a public appearance since 2013, alarmed fans last week when a tweet of his implied he was dying. The 75-year-old later clarified that his tweet was not to be taken literally and that he was in good health (since everyone is technically always one day closer to their inevitable death).

After Stern discussed the incident, his producer Gary Dell’Abate said he’d been corresponding with Simmons, who is a friend.

“I wrote to Richard, not for airtime for the radio, and I’m not gonna talk about what we discussed, but I did confirm that I was corresponding with him. Because, you know, he did some really nice things for my family [when] my brother was in the hospital. He bought my mother a dress for my wedding. He’s just super nice to us and I just wanted to make sure he’s OK,” Dell’Abate told Stern.

That prompted Stern to speculate about why Simmons retired. “Here’s my theory: Maybe it just got to be too much. He was getting older and he felt like, ‘I don’t want people to see me old.’ Or maybe he just burned out. Maybe he just was like, ‘You know what, I’ve had enough.’”

C0-host Robin Quivers said, “I think it’s the burned out thing, because Richard was Richard 24 hours a day. He was always ready to hit the high notes. You know, and he very rarely was quiet and just calm.”

Dell’Abate added that Simmons would spend all day writing letters to people and calling them. “He had a group of people and I think every day he made hundreds of calls and wrote hundreds of letters, it’s exhausting,” he said.

“Maybe he just burned out, he got woozy from all that helping people,” Stern speculated. “Of course we asked him. It would be great because everyone wants to know what’s going on with him. I would like to do it serious type of interview with Richard Simmons and get to the bottom of all this stuff. It would be fascinating.”

Watch the segment in the video, above.