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Fitness advocate Richard Simmons, wearing his signature shorts and tank top, leads Capitol Hill staff and visitors through an exercise routine July 24, 2008, in Washington, D.C.

Fitness advocate Richard Simmons, wearing his signature shorts and tank top, leads Capitol Hill staff and visitors through an exercise routine July 24, 2008, in Washington, D.C.

NPR producer Sam Sanders headed to Beverly Hills, Calif., recently to see longtime fitness guru Richard Simmons in action and find out how he's been at it so long. He sent this reporter's notebook of his encounter with the man who's been helping people lose weight for nearly 40 years.

While working as a waiter, Richard Simmons saved up a year and a half of tips to open his first aerobics studio in Beverly Hills in 1974. Ever since then, he's been planting himself in America's pop-culture psyche with dozens of infomercials and best-selling books, almost endless parodies of his over-the-top persona, and seemingly endless TV and film appearances.

I have to do it till the day I die. If I don't move, I'm not happy.

- Richard Simmons

You could only imagine my excitement at a dinner party last spring, when a friend of a friend told me about Simmons' Beverly Hills aerobics classes. Turns out, whenever Simmons is in town, he leads the courses himself, in that same studio he moved into nearly two decades ago. The classes are open to the public, only cost $12 and they have a cult following in Los Angeles. I knew I had to go, and record it.

So, I convinced Simmons' team to let me shadow him one Saturday afternoon in May, traipsing behind the dynamo with a big fuzzy shotgun mic in hand.

When I walked into the studio, Simmons was in the middle of one of his iconic pep talks. Part AA meeting, part church testimony service, Simmons had on a handmade glittery shirt and tank-top ensemble (with two-toned tights, of course), and was circled up on the floor with a lot of people who really wanted to lose weight. As a larger, middle-aged woman started crying while telling Simmons about her weight-loss goals, Simmons broke up the tension in that earnestly wacky way only he can.

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