Watch CBS News

Kiss And Tell: Sex After 60

After a lifetime of teaching high school English, Jane Juska took a while to adjust to retirement in Berkeley, Calif.

"In the beginning, you don't quite know what to do with yourself," says Juska, who now spends more time with her new granddaughter.

But four years ago, this divorced mother of a grown son realized there was something missing in her life. "Well, sex is as good a word as I can think of," says Juska, who had not had sex for 30 years.

What made her change? She told Correspondent Erin Moriarty last January that she went through psychoanalysis.


Jane's therapist encouraged her to take some creative steps to get back into the dating scene. "I would hang out in hardware stores, because men go there who know how to do things," she says. "I met women, fascinating women."

Nothing worked until Jane says she went to her local library one day and decided to write a very frank and revealing personal ad: "The ad said: 'Before I turn 67 next March, I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me."

She posted the ad in The New York Review of Books because she thought "it might filter out some of the lewdness." But would her sexy solicitation attract men?

"I thought, 'I'm gonna get an answer, and I bet you I get two,'" says Juska, who received 63 responses, from all over. "I was just screaming. I said, 'Hey, this is great.'"

Some letters were sexy: "I think eroticism is the about the elation and evanescence of life."

And some were plain smutty: "There were also a couple of pictures of naked guys, one wearing only sunglasses, and he included a filthy, filthy poem."

But Jane wanted more than scarlet letters. The men she wanted had to be well-read and wonderful writers. And turning Jane on was what the author, Jonah, an enthusiastic 85-year-old, had in mind when he flew from Maryland to meet her.

"At the airport, he just put his hands on just the right place," says Juska. "My ass. And that did it."

Their destination: a suite at the Claremont Hotel, Berkeley's famous resort and spa. "I'd gotten these champagne flutes. I love champagne flutes, and I made this wonderful little picnic," says Juska. "We just, you know, went right at it. It was pretty good."

But the much-anticipated ecstasy didn't last long. "He just said he didn't want me anymore," says Juska. "But before that very forthright statement of his, we enjoyed each other's company."


Not to be discouraged, Jane was determined to enjoy the "company" of as many men as possible.

And then she did what some might say was an un-ladylike thing: she kissed and told in her recently published memoirs, "A Round-Heeled Woman, My Late Life Adventures in Sex and Romance."

And everywhere Jane goes, she's discovered her book speaks to women and men of all ages.

While Jane has no qualms talking about those men, when 48 Hours asked them to talk about her, they declined. One of them was Sydney, a 62-year-old book lover -- one of several men Jane met in New York.

Jane says she met Sydney at the Piedmont Morgan Library: "It's an elegant behave-yourself-library where I met Sydney, and he said, 'Put your breast on the table.' He did, so I did."

But the most surprising suitor of this aging beauty was Graham, 32. "He came down the escalator and I thought I was going to faint," says Juska. "He's a very old 32."


Jane seems so proper, and yet her book is so sexually graphic. "I know that was hard, it's hard to write about sex," she says.

And in New York, Juska got exactly what she was looking for -- a lot of sex with men she liked. But she also got something else that she never expected. She fell in love.

His name was Robert, a retired professor of medicine. "The first time in my life, I lost 10 pounds, just because I was seething for this man," she says. "We loved the same movies, we loved the opera. Really, he did everything he said he would do except love me the way I did him."

Robert, who already had a girlfriend, just wanted sex. And he ended up breaking her heart. "When I wrote the part about Robert, I cried through most of it. It was very hard."

Jane learned you are never too old for heartbreak. Still, life after Robert has been full of sweet surprises. She says she's had dozens of men contact her because of her book – and she has no intention of settling down.

"Not at the present time," says Juska, laughing.

48 Hours aired this report in January. Since then, Jane Juska has fallen in love again and is seeing the man exclusively. As for the ad she placed -- applicants need no longer apply.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.