Article content continued

At its peak, he was reaching millions of readers through 16 magazines like Muscle & Fitness, Men’s Fitness, Flex and Shape, and selling them mail-order nutritional supplements to speed the dream of rippling muscles. By the 1980s he was marketing his weight-lifting equipment in 6,000 retail outlets and nutritional products in 12,000 stores in the United States alone. By the 1990s, he was selling in at least 60 countries and grossing hundreds of millions of dollars annually for his Los Angeles-based enterprise, Weider America’s Total Fitness Company.

‘He taught us that through hard work and training we could all be champions’

Boosted by major events like Mr. Olympia and Mr. Universe, in which Mr. Schwarzenegger was a perennial contender, Mr. Weider and his brother Ben made their fortunes before bodybuilding’s popularity was eclipsed by the richer drama of professional wrestling. Lou Ferrigno, who played the Incredible Hulk on television, also came through the ranks of Weider star bodybuilders.

The brothers sold the magazines for more than $350-million in 2002. Ben Weider died in 2008.

Praising Joe Weider’s “fantastic legacy of a fitter world,” Mr. Schwarzenegger — who went on to be a Hollywood star and former governor of California — said he was the man who made his dreams come true, by inviting him to Los Angeles as a professional bodybuilder.

“I knew about Joe Weider long before I met him — he was the godfather of fitness who told all of us to ‘Be Somebody with a Body,’” Mr. Schwarzenegger said. “He taught us that through hard work and training we could all be champions. When I was a young boy in Austria, his muscle magazines provided me with the inspiration and the blueprint to push myself beyond my limits and imagine a much bigger future…. Very few people can claim to have influenced as many lives as Joe did through his magazines, his supplements, his training equipment, and his big-hearted personality.”