Sally Jessy Raphaël

Sally Jessy Raphael
Sally Jessy Raphael at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie
Born	Sally Lowenthal (1935-02-25) February 25, 1935 (age 82) Easton, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation	Talk show host
Years active	1959–present
Spouse(s)	Andrew Vladimir (1953-1958; divorced; 2 children) Karl Soderland (1962-present; 1 child)

Sally Lowenthal (born February 25, 1935), better known as Sally Jessy Raphael, is an American former talk show host known for her talk show program Sally (originally titled The Sally Jessy Raphael Show), which she hosted for two decades, and for the bright red oversized eyeglasses she wears in all public appearances.

Lowenthal was born in Easton, Pennsylvania, in 1935, and graduated from Easton Area High School. 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. Sally has a younger brother, Steven Lowenthal.

She spent part 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 prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse.

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 got considerable experience in the media in Puerto Rico, where she worked in both radio and television—one of her jobs was doing a TV cooking show. It was while working in radio that 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, Florida. It was while Raphael was on the air as a radio announcer in Miami that she met and became friends with talk show host Larry King.