(FORTUNE Small Business) – Shame on us that no one even thought to ask Alan Kligerman whether he'd like to participate in the "How We Got Started" accounts you've just read. Yes, the 74-year-old entrepreneur has a tale to tell, and it includes a classic payoff: The products he created on his own—which you've at least passed on the shelves of your local supermarket or drugstore—have earned him an estimated $100 million. Yet he's not out there peddling his story or firing people on network TV or proclaiming that he has unlocked the Seven Secrets to Entrepreneurial Riches. In fact, there was a time when Kligerman, if asked what he did for a living, would reply with this conversation killer: "I tinker with carbohydrates."

His tinkering has yielded two huge brand-name products: Beano and Lactaid. If you don't consider the latter a monumental achievement, ask someone who suffers from lactose intolerance how it feels to be freed from choosing between Coffee-mate and an hour in the loo. Beano, similarly, has enabled users to tuck into their favorite high-protein, high-fiber, low-fat bean dishes without discomfort or fear of audible embarrassment. Each has its legion of fans (syndicated columnist Dave Barry claims to have first heard Beano's praises from Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens), and each has made Kligerman wildly wealthy. He has created a whole family of lesser products as well, including CurTail, a version of Beano for dogs (Labrador owners, take back your TV rooms), and a new cure called Prelief, which was originally targeted at heartburn suffers but has yet to find a profitable ailment to address. "I know this will at some point be a credible medical product that will see its day," Kligerman says.

But so what if it doesn't? Kligerman has proved what he can do, although because of his chosen focus—flatulence, diarrhea, and other disturbances down under—he feels obliged to suppress his pride. "I've sat in a restaurant and overheard people talking enthusiastically about a product I did," confesses Kligerman, whose company, AkPharma, operates out of Egg Harbor Township in New Jersey, the state where Einstein and Edison did their tinkering. "But I don't need to say anything and throw who I am in their faces. I feel good enough about it. I'm secure with it."

In Kligerman's presence, Beano devotees seem programmed to recount the iconic campfire sequence from Blazing Saddles. (The scene is "physiologically incorrect," he helpfully points out.) Kligerman doesn't even want to ever hear the F-word, which has a whole different meaning in his life. "Believe me, I am no prude," says Kligerman, "but I find I have a problem with that word."

He also had a problem with college: His restlessness drove him to drop out of Cornell. He joined the family dairy business, where his tinkering took over, leading him to create SugarLo ice cream for diabetics in 1957. That "prosperous little business" experienced a meltdown, he recalls, when the government banned cyclamate sweeteners in 1969. A letter tipped him off to lactose intolerance, which later got him "looking around for other foods that give people trouble." Not a glamorous path, for sure, but a lucrative one. How much money has he made, exactly? He's not sharing details. "It's tasteless to put the dollar number out there," he chides. "I loathe this kind of thing. It sounds like chest thumping."

Unlike some less successful entrepreneurs we could mention, Kligerman doesn't need fame for validation. He is happy just helping his crampy customers. No doubt he should be hosting The Apprentice in place of some struggling casino impresario with bad hair and worse manners. Instead Kligerman is keeping to himself, mowing his own lawn, and hoping that no one who passes by will recognize him.