‘The symbol of fitness:’ Sit and Be Fit star, Spokane native Mary Ann Wilson remembered for her dedication to health for all

Mary Ann Wilson, the Spokane founder and face of the television workout program “Sit and Be Fit,” died Wednesday at the age of 87.
Filmed at the KSPS-PBS television station on the South Hill near Ferris High School, Wilson developed and began producing her gentle workout show in 1987 and continued – albeit with a handful of extended breaks – until she was 85 in 2023. Picked up nationally, Spokane viewers have long seen Wilson and her chair at 11:30 a.m. on 7.1 KSPS, played after weekday morning kids shows.
Seniors, people with disabilities and kids all loved the show, writing in frequently, Wilson’s four adult children said. Robert Wilson, 56, said his mom was driven by her viewers, insisting on personally taking phone calls to discuss mobility issues with strangers and returning handwritten letters to everyone who sent one in to her. His brother Jim Wilson, 62, said that as a businessman, that part of her drove him crazy at times.
“We aren’t talking 15 minutes, we’re talking, like, 45 minutes on the phone,” he said, putting his palms to his temples in mock exasperation.
Sit and Be Fit was always a family affair, with Wilson’s kids and 13 grandkids making guest appearances, helping on set and working behind the curtain. Gretchen Cowan, 64, was the official producer for the show, often joining her mother on screen. The calm-voiced, technically minded woman the camera captured wasn’t just an act, her kids said, “it was really her.”
Cowan and her siblings remember their mom as being very pure, religious and political – and an avid supporter of her grandson’s soccer games at Gonzaga University. She was a practicing Presbyterian, and encouraged her kids to reach out to elected officials for change. She saw no issue with using anatomical terms like “pubic bone” and “urinary incontinence” on television, much to one granddaughter’s dismay at the time. Despite living in Washington, she remained an avid Steelers fan as well.
Wilson’s daughter Amy Jo LeLaCheur, 58, said that her mom and her son Tyler were particularly close. Tyler worked as a cameraman for Sit and Be Fit and stood up for his grandma online when people made fun of her show. With Tyler having many health conditions, LeLaCheur said that Wilson’s help watching him – say, when it was time for church on a Sunday morning – “let me have a life.”
Tyler LeLaCheur died in 2009 at age 17.
“They had a special bond,” LeLaCheur said.
But Sit and Be Fit was hardly the beginning of Wilson’s story. Born on the south side of Pittsburg in 1938, she was the only child of Louis Bucci and Mary Ann Butkowska.
She grew up in the area, attending the now-closed St. Francis Medical Center’s School of Nursing to become a registered nurse. Cowan said that her mother “wanted to always get out of Pittsburgh.”
“I don’t want to bash on Pittsburgh, but at the time it was, you know, smokey air,” Cowan said. “She lived above a bar with her parents. So, she moved to California.”
Her half-sister, Anna Marie Bucci, 65, said that when Wilson came to Pittsburgh to visit, the pair would look up at her old window from the street, and Wilson told her that she would look outside and think, “There has to be something better.”
It was at a California party where Wilson met the man her family describes as “the love of her life” – Marine Corps Major Jim Wilson. When her then-fiancé forgot her birthday, Jim Wilson brought her a rose and took her to church.
“It was a done deal,” Cowan said.
The couple got engaged, and Jim Wilson stood her up at the alter at least once – Bucci said three times, but Cowan has only heard of once. Either way, they did marry in 1960 (Jim Wilson had to plan the wedding this time), and Bucci said that he was “the best husband ever” for her sister.
The couple had four kids together, and Mary Ann Wilson stopped her work as an RN to care for them as the family moved around the country for Jim Wilson’s military career. They planned to move to Colorado and open a ski resort together once he retired from the military, Bucci said. Jim Wilson died suddenly of a heart attack in 1971, only a month and a half after moving to Virginia.
Devastated, the family moved to Spokane. The city was Jim Wilson’s hometown, and the family had lived in the area for a year when he was deployed to Vietnam. They moved back largely to be near his parents.
The tragedy never swayed Mary Ann Wilson’s dedication to taking care of her children, though.
“She was the best mom,” Rob Wilson said, even though he admits to walking the line of a mischievous streak his two older siblings began in their teens.
“I just admired her for not ever showing us – not ever breaking down,” Cowan said. “Just letting us know everything’s going to be alright, and she put her life and soul into making each dream come true.”
It was while she was teaching exercise classes in Spokane to earn some money in the early ‘80s that she got the idea for Sit and Be Fit. Bucci said that people would come up to Wilson after yoga and ask for advice because it was too strenuous for them.
“The lightbulb went off in her head. There’s a whole population that needs something else,” Bucci said. “You can sit in a chair and still exercise.”
In one of her final newsletters, Mary Ann Wilson wrote to her “exercise friends” about what she was feeling when she walked into the KSPS studio to tape the first episodes of her show.
“I was excited beyond words,” she wrote. “My enthusiasm was driven by a heartfelt belief that this program would prove itself by helping viewers feel and function better regardless of their physical limitations or medical conditions.”
The show took off, quickly becoming broadcast nationally, and viewers wrote to Mary Ann Wilson about how her simple exercises had helped them stay mobile or recover from injury. People would send in photos of their kids doing exercises with towels as props along to her show. One of the more impactful stories on Mary Ann Wilson, Bucci said, was that of a man whose garage door fell on him, and doctors told him he would never walk again. He wrote to her that starting off just doing her gentle exercises from his bed, he was eventually able to walk again.
Cowan said that any attempts to remove the show are consistently met with people calling in until they re-air it. Fred Rogers, from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, was another big advocate for Sit and Be Fit in the television world, Rob Wilson said.
In 2017, Mary Ann Wilson was inducted into the National Fitness Hall of Fame.
It was viewer requests that kept her coming in to record more shows, even though Jim Wilson said it was something of a financial marvel that she managed. LeLaCheur said her mother made “many sacrifices” to keep the show going.”
“She really felt like it was God’s mission and calling for her,” LeLaCheur said.
The show became a 501c3 nonprofit in 2000 because it wasn’t making money.
“Each time someone approached me with a grandiose business proposal, a quiet voice in my heart said, “Don’t do it,” ” Mary Ann Wilson wrote in the same newsletter. “‘Stay true to the needs of the people you serve.’ Thanks to that inner guidance, I didn’t fall prey to profit-driven ideas.”
Despite a lifetime of fitness, a heart condition was what eventually caught up with Mary Ann Wilson.
“She lived a very pure life, her body was just –” Cowan said. “It’s just hard when you’ve been so fit and strong all your life. You’re the symbol of fitness to a lot of people.”
Sit and Be Fit will continue to be broadcast on KSPS PBS, weekends at 11:30 a.m.