I had the pleasure of calling Joe Weider and his lovely wife Betty, friends. Never a nicer couple could you ever have hoped to meet. I told my mom I was worried about Joe when the annual Christmas card arrived with Joe pictured back in July… That was a first.
If you don’t know of Joe, just think Arnold Schwarzenegger,
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“Every sport needs a hero and I knew that Arnold was the right man,” he once said.
“I knew about Joe Weider long before I met him,” Schwarzenegger, who tweeted the news of his old friend’s death, said in a lengthy statement posted on his website. “He was the godfather of fitness who told all of us to be somebody with a body. He taught us that through hard work and training we could all be champions.”
A bodybuilder with an impressive physique himself, Weider became better known in later years as a behind-the-scenes guru to the sport. He popularized bodybuilding and spread the message of health and fitness worldwide with such publications as Muscle & Fitness, Flex and Shape. Schwarzenegger himself is the executive editor of Muscle & Fitness and Flex. He created one of bodybuilding’s pre-eminent events, the Mr. Olympia competition, in 1965, adding to it the Ms. Olympia contest in 1980, the Fitness Olympia in 1995 and the Figure Olympia in 2003. He also relentlessly promoted Schwarzenegger, who won the Mr. Olympia title a record seven times. Weider brought Schwarzenegger to the United States early in his career, where he helped train the future governor of California as well as aided him in getting into business. Schwarzenegger also said Weider helped land him his first movie role, in the forgettable film “Hercules in New York,” by passing him off to the producers as a German Shakespearean actor. “Joe didn’t just inspire my earliest dreams; he made them come true the day he invited me to move to America to pursue my bodybuilding career,” the actor said in his statement. “I will never forget his generosity. One of Joe’s greatest qualities is that he wasn’t just generous with his money; he freely gave of his time and expertise and became a father figure for me.” Thanks CBS for the great story on Joe.