Sally Jessy Raphael
Sally Lowenthal (born February 25, 1935), better known as Sally Jessy Raphael, is an American former tabloid talk show host known for her program Sally (originally called The Sally Jessy Raphael Show).[2]
Sally Jessy Raphael
Talk show host
1959–present
3
Early life and education[edit]
Lowenthal was born on February 25, 1935, in Easton, Pennsylvania. She attended and graduated from Easton Area High School in Easton. She also spent time in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where her father, Jesse Lowenthal, was in the rum exporting business and her mother, Zelda Lowenthal (aka Dede Lowry), ran an art gallery. She has a younger brother, Steven Lowenthal.[3]
She spent some of her teenage years in Scarsdale, New York, where one of her first media jobs was at the local AM radio station, WFAS. The station had a program by and for junior high school students and Raphael read the news. She attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan. Raphael studied acting under the tutelage of Sanford Meisner at New York City’s Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre.[4]
She took her mother's maiden name of Raphael as her professional name and plucked the theatrical surname of Jessy from her father's family.[5]
Career[edit]
Journalism and broadcasting[edit]
Following her graduation from Columbia University, she became a news correspondent, covering Central America for the Associated Press and United Press International, thanks in large part to her ability to speak both English and Spanish fluently. She also obtained considerable experience in the media in Puerto Rico, where she worked in both radio and television. One of her first jobs was hosting a TV cooking show. While working in radio, she met the man who became her second husband, Karl Soderlund, who was the general manager of a radio station that hired her. After he was fired, the two left Puerto Rico to work in Miami. While Raphael was on the air as a radio announcer in Miami, she met and became friends with talk show host Larry King.
Raphael's broadcasting career was not an immediate success. She told numerous reporters over the years that she bounced around from station to station in both Puerto Rico and the United States, working as a disc jockey, news reporter, and the host of a show where she interviewed celebrities. She worked at 24 stations, and was fired from 18 of them. In the early 1980s, she was asked to do a call-in advice show on WMCA in New York City. In the late 1980s, she guest starred as herself in The Equalizer episode "Making of a Martyr".
Personal life[edit]
Raphael was married for the first time in 1953, at age 18, to Andrew Vladimir; they divorced five years later. They had two daughters, Allison and Andrea, and two grandchildren, Max and Kyle. Allison died at the age of 33 on February 2, 1992; her death was ruled an accidental overdose because of "combined effects of several prescribed drugs and over-the-counter medications."[10]
She married Karl Soderlund in 1962. He later became her manager. They have one son, Jason. They were married for 58 years until Soderlund's death in 2020.