Sally Jessy Raphael
Sally Jessy Raphael
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, searchEarly years
Raphael was born in Easton, Pennsylvania and graduated from Easton Area High School in the city. She was raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico where her father, Jesse Lowenthal, was in the rum exporting business and her mother, Dede Lowry (née Raphael), an artist, ran an art gallery. She also 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 did 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 Puerto Rico.
She earned a BFA from Columbia University in New York City, although some sources say her degree was in journalism. She also told an interviewer for CBS Marketwatch.com in 2001 that she had a master's degree from the University of Puerto Rico. At one point, she thought about becoming an actress but ultimately decided to go into broadcasting.
Career
Journalism and broadcasting
Following her graduation from Columbia University, Raphael 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 got fired, the two left Puerto Rico to work in Miami. It was while Raphael was on the air as a radio announcer in Miami, Florida that she met and became friends with talk show host Larry King.
By her own admission, 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. It seemed none of her jobs lasted very long, often through no fault of her own: in radio, stations often changed owners, and when that happened, staff changes resulted. But no matter how many jobs she lost, she refused to give up, even though at one point, she had held 24 different jobs, and was fired from 18 of them. For a brief period of time, her financial situation was so dire that she was on food stamps. But fortunately
