Sally Jessy Raphael

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Sally Lowenthal (born February 25, 1935), also known as Sally Jessy Raphael, is an American former talk show host best known for her talk show program Sally (originally called Sally Jessy Raphael Show).

Early life

Lowenthal was born in 1935 in Easton, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Easton Area High School. She also spent time in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where her father, Jesse Lowenthal, was a member of the rum exporting industry, and her mother, Zelda Lowenthal (aka Dede Lowry), owned an art gallery. Steven Lowenthal, Sally's younger brother, has died.

She spent some of her teen years in Scarsdale, New York, where one of her first media appearances was at the local AM radio station, WFAS. The station had a curriculum 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 at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City under Sanford Meisner's tutelage.

According to reports, she used Raphael as her professional name and plucked Jessy from her father's family's theatrical surname.

Personal life

Sally Jessy Raphael was married for the first time in 1953, to Andrew Vladimir, with whom she had two children, Allison and Andrea. Max and Kyle are also grandparents. They divorced five years ago. Allison, one of her daughters from the 1950s, died on February 2, 1992. Allison was 33 years old, and her death was determined an accidental overdose due to "combined effects of several prescription drugs."

In 1962, she married Karl Soderlund. During her career, he would later become her boss. Jason is their one son, and they have one together. They were married for 58 years before Karl's death in 2020.

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Career

Following her graduation from Columbia University, she became a news reporter for The Associated Press and United Press International, thanks in large part to her ability to speak both English and Spanish fluently. She also worked in Puerto Rico, where she worked in both radio and television—one of her roles was doing a TV cooking show. She first met Karl Soderlund, her second husband, who was the general manager of a radio station that had recruited her, while working in radio. After being fired, the two men moved from Puerto Rico to Miami, Florida. Raphael was on the air in Miami as a radio announcer, and she and talk show host Larry King became good friends.

Raphael's broadcasting career was not a success by her own admission. She bounced around from station to station in Puerto Rico and the United States, from station to station, newspaper reporter to host of a television show where she interviewed celebrities for many years. And though she had worked at 24 stations and was fired from 18 of them, she refused to give up. When she was invited to attend a call-in advice show on WMCA in New York City in the early 1980s, she finally had the opportunity. She appeared in the Equalizer's episode "Making of a Martyr" in the late 1980s as herself.

Karl Soderlund, Raphael's husband, took over as her boss and was a partner in her two biggest triumphs. She hosted a radio call-in advice show on NBC Talknet from 1981 to 1987, but she is best known for hosting The Sally Jessy Raphael Show (later shortened to Sally), which ran in first-run syndication from October 17, 1983 to May 24, 2002. When she first caught producer Maurice Tunick's attention, she discovered his brand new on "Talknet." Tunick had auditioned a number of potential hosts, but hadn't yet found the correct one, according to David Richards of The Washington Post. In August 1981, Tunick offered Raphael a one-hour trial on NBC's Washington, D.C., affiliate, WRC. She decided that rather than hosting a political show, she would give advice and address topics she was familiar with, such as relationship problems. Her advice show was soon being broadcast on over 200 radio stations, and she'd amassed a following of followers.

One of those fans was the talk show host Phil Donahue, who happened to see her show one night and loved how she related to the audience. His encouragement prompted her to try out on television, where Burt Dubrow, a television producer, gave her the opportunity to be a guest host on a talk show of his own. She was not particularly polished, but people who had adored her radio show were raving about her being on television. Her non-threatening and common sense of demeanor appealed to Dubrow, who hoped she would gain more confidence if she had more television experience. She had her own show on KSDK-TV in St. Louis by mid-October 1983. The Sally Jessy Raphael Show was only half an hour, but it was the start of her lucrative career as a talk show host.

Raphael's oversized red-framed glasses were a design that was purely accidental. Her red-framed glasses go back to her first broadcast news job. Raphael had trouble reading the teleprompter and, five minutes before airtime, rushed to a bookstore across the street from the studio to buy a pair of reading glasses. A red pair was the only one she could find. Although her bosses looked them, the audience seemed to think they looked fine, so she kept wearing that style from then on.

Both Raphael and Jerry Springer were in decline by 2000. Springer's ratings were the lowest they had been in three years, as one media analyst said, but Raphael's were the lowest they had been in 12 years. Raphael was already having problems with her syndicator; she felt that USA Networks Inc. was more interested in doing promotion for Springer, her show was more popular than hers, and Maury Povich, who had recently left Paramount Television to join the USA's syndication arm, than she was for her own show. In early 1998, she attended her 3,500th appearance. It was announced in March 2002 that the show would be cancelled after an 18-year run. Raphael was voted by Talkers Magazine to both their 25 Greatest Radio Show Hosts of all time (she was #5) and the 25 Greatest Television Show Hosts of all time (she was #11). She was one of only three celebrities to make both the radio and television lists.

Sally Jessy Raphael on Talknet, (previously named Sally JR's Open House), on the Internet and in syndication to local radio stations from 2005 to 2008. In comparison to at least one station in Arizona, the show's flagship station, WVIE, Baltimore, Maryland, aired on AM stations in New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Midwest. The show also appeared on XM Satellite Radio's America's Talk channel from November 19, 2007, to its conclusion. The name "Talknet" is a revival of the name of NBC Talknet, the now-defunct radio network that carried her previous radio show from 1981 to 1987. On July 7, 2008, she abruptly ended the program.

On November 10, 2010, Raphael, as well as former talk show hosts Phil Donahue, Geraldo Rivera, Ricki Lake, and Montel Williams were welcomed as guests on The Oprah Winfrey Exhibition.

When he was elected into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1993, Raphael was able to induct Rush Limbaugh into the Radio Hall of Fame. Limbaugh was surprised by the offer, but Raphael was able to use her speech to protest the vote and excoriate Limbaugh. Paul Harvey defended Limbaugh, who was secretly wounded by Raphael's betrayal the next day. One of Limbaugh's employees smuggishly posted a snapshot of Raphael without her makeup or trademark glasses (taken from one of Raphael's employees) into Limbaugh's television show without his knowledge.

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