Cristina Saralegui
Cristina María Saralegui de Ávila (born January 29, 1948) is a Cuban-born American journalist, television personality, actress and talk show host of the Spanish-language eponymous show, El show de Cristina. Before her television career, she worked for ten years as editor-in-chief of the Spanish-language version of Cosmopolitan magazine distributed throughout Latin America.
Cristina Saralegui
- Cuba
- United States
1973–present
Tony Menendez (divorced)
Marcos Avila
(1982–present)
2 (and 1 stepdaughter)
Early life and family[edit]
Cristina María Saralegui Santamarina was born in Miramar, Havana, Cuba, to Francisco Rene Saralegui Álvarez, Jr. and María Cristina de las Nieves Santamarina Díaz. She is the eldest of five, she has two sisters, Vicky and María Eugenia, as well as two brothers, Patxi and Iñaki. Saralegui is descended from Basque Country ancestors, with all four of her grandparents having origins in Spain. Her paternal grandfather Francisco Saralegui Arizubieta was Basque, from Lizarza and her paternal grandmother Amalia "Amalita" Álvarez Cuesta, an Asturian from Gijon; her maternal grandfather was José Santamarina Iviricu, and her maternal grandmother Águeda Díaz.[1]
In 1960, following the Cuban Revolution, Saralegui and her family fled to Miami, Florida, United States, and settled on Key Biscayne.
Journalism career[edit]
After graduating from the Academy of the Assumption in 1966, Saralegui enrolled at the University of Miami. In 1973, she began an internship at the magazine Vanidades. This allowed her to improve her written Spanish to the level of her spoken language. By 1979, Saralegui was appointed editor of the Spanish version of Cosmopolitan magazine, working out of Miami and having been officially welcomed into the fold by Cosmopolitan U.S. editor Helen Gurley Brown, who received her at a party in New York City. She continued in this role through most of the 1980s. Her close relationship at Cosmopolitan with Helen Gurley Brown was a mentor-type relationship, and Cristina Saralegui was labeled for a time as "the Latin Helen Gurley Brown".[2]
While editor of Cosmopolitan, Saralegui sought to give information to Latin American audiences about important topics, such as sexual and mental health, which Saralegui felt were not typically discussed enough in Latin families. This sometimes put her at odds with Gurley Brown, whose approach to the English-language magazine was more sexually forward, while Saralegui recognized that there were still many facets of "liberation" Latin women still had not attained.
Personal life[edit]
She is divorced from her first husband, Tony, with whom she has a daughter Cristina Amelia. She has been married to Marcos Ávila since 1982, a former member of the Miami Sound Machine, and from this marriage she has a stepdaughter, Stephanie. Together they have one child, son Jon Marcos.