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Elaine LaLanne says that her life can be divided into two acts: before Jack and after Jack.
Jack, of course, is jack lalanneher late husband whose television show The Jack LaLanne Show (1951 to 1985) helped redefine America’s approach to health, fitness, and nutrition.
In addition to popularizing what is now known as jumping jacks and opening the country’s first modern gym in Oakland, California, in 1936, Jack was also the inventor of many gym staples — including the world’s first leg extension machine, weight selector machine, and cable/cable machines — as well as the world’s first nutrition bars and “instant breakfast.”
Through it all, Elaine was his silent business partner and wife of 51 years, before jack died in 2011 at the age of 96 years. Her illustrious careers earned them the titles of “Godfather” and “First Lady” of fitness.
“My life is an open book,” Elaine, 96, tells Yahoo Life in a video interview from her home office, where stacks of old photos and Jack’s journal entries tower above her desk. “Research,” she says, that she’s collecting for an upcoming book about her late husband’s early life on television.
Reading his old journal entries has been cathartic, Elaine says, and in many ways has reminded her of why she fell in love with him in the first place.
“I was inspired again,” he explains. “If you knew Jack, you couldn’t be around him and not be inspired. He was funny. He was short [spoken]. And it made a lot of sense. She used to say, ‘I want to dig up all that stuff in that brain.’ All my books I’ve written, I’ve written seven, guess who I went to? I asked him about this. I would ask him about it. I learned a lot from him. But he also learned a lot from me.”
The Jack La Lane Show was a local daily exercise show in San Francisco when it debuted in 1951. Eventually, it grew into national syndication and ran for more than 30 years, during which time the couple, along with their dogs, Happy and Lucky, challenged viewers to think differently about their eating habits.
When it first aired, Elaine says most critics labeled the duo “healthy nuts.”
“This was all something new,” he explains about Jack’s food education for viewers, particularly about refined sugars (not that great for you), butter (same theory) and the idea of eating ingredients of natural origin. While these ideas are quite popular today, it was a hard lesson for American viewers to swallow at the time, given that most household diets consisted of “mashed potatoes and gravy” and “butter, smeared on everything.” , she says.
“That’s just what we ate in those days,” Elaine notes of the American diet in the late ’30s and ’40s. But he had a way, and more and more people would listen.
“I remember saying, ‘This makes a lot of sense,'” he says of his message. “He could put it in a way, in a simple way. See, Jack was a very simple person. He wanted to make everything simple. He wanted the exercise to be simple. He didn’t want it to be complicated. That’s just the way he it was”.
“It’s amazing what Jack could do,” adds Elaine, who worked in television before she met her husband, noting that his team called him “One Take Jack” for his ability to create a breaking TV ad. live every time a station asked him to.
“They were saying, ‘Give us a 10-second tone for the station.’ Whatever the station, in Cincinnati or New York or whatever, they always wanted him to do a little spot because he already knew it in his brain.”
In fact, Jack preached the benefits of healthy living and longevity well into his 90s, later appearing on various talk shows advocate the effects of juices fruits and vegetables.
As her partner in life and business, Elaine helped realize many of her artistic visions, which, earlier this month, earned her and her late husband (and Dr. Kenneth Cooper, who started the movement aerobic fitness) the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.
Still, while their success was a shared effort in many ways, Elaine says she never minded playing second fiddle to her suave husband.
“Since I was a little girl, I haven’t been one to need praise. All I want to do is help people,” she says, noting that “helping people help themselves” was a shared mission.
Today, Elaine is carrying on Jack’s mission, using her own experience to speak about health, wellness and longevity. She argues that it all comes down to one basic principle: “Keep it simple.”
“Jack was once asked a question about exercise: ‘Do you really like to exercise, Jack?’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t know, but I like the results,'” she says. “So the thing is, if you go to the gym, think about the results you’re going to get, because if you stick with it, you’re going to get the results. And you’re going to live longer.” I think, because here I am today at almost 97 years old. I totally know I’d be six feet underground if I hadn’t been interested in my body. It is as he says: ‘It is the living temple of God.’ You don’t treat your car like you treat your body, do you? You don’t put water in your gas tank.”
“I just try to do the best I can with the team I have,” he adds. “Jack was a great motivator. He talked about how you can stay motivated, dare to dream and overcome obstacles, how your attitudes count in your life and how it changes your life.”
Elaine continues: “The mind is a mind. It’s full of diamonds, and all you have to do is dig them up.”
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