Sally Jessy Raphael

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 in the rum exporting business and her mother, Zelda Lowenthal (aka Dede Lowry), ran an art gallery. Sally has a younger brother, Steven Lowenthal.

Sally Jessy Raphaël was married for the first time in 1953, at age 18, to Andrew Vladimir, with whom she had two daughters: Allison and Andrea. They divorced 5 years later. One of her daughters from that union, Allison, died on February 2, 1992. Allison was 33 years old, and her death was ruled an accidental overdose because of "combined effects of several prescribed drugs".

Raphaël's husband Karl Soderlund assumed the role of her manager, and was a partner in her two biggest successes. She hosted a radio call-in advice show distributed by NBC Talknet which ran from Monday November 2, 1981 to 1987, but is best known for hosting the television talk show, The Sally Jessy Raphaël Show (later shortened to Sally), which ran in first-run syndication from October 17, 1983, to May 24, 2002. "Talknet" was brand new when she came to the attention of producer Maurice Tunick. According to David Richards of The Washington Post, Tunick had auditioned a number of potential hosts, but hadn't yet found the right one. Tunick gave Raphaël a one-hour trial run on NBC's Washington, D.C. affiliate, WRC, in August 1981. Before going on the air, she decided that rather than doing a political show, she would give advice and discuss subjects she knew a lot about, such as relationship problems. Soon, her advice show was being heard on over 200 radio stations, and she developed a loyal group of fans.

By 2000, both Raphaël and Springer were in decline. As one media critic observed, Springer's ratings were the lowest they had been in 3 years, but Raphaël's ratings were now the lowest they had been in 12 years. Raphaël was already having problems with her syndicator: she believed that USA Networks Inc. was more interested in doing promotion for Springer, whose show was more popular than hers, and Povich, who had recently left Paramount Television to join USA's syndication arm, than they ever were for her show. She celebrated her 3,500th episode in early 1998. By March 2002, it was announced that after an 18-year run, her show was being canceled. In 2002 Raphaël was named by Talkers Magazine to both their 25 Greatest Radio Talk Show Hosts of all time (she was #5), and the 25 Greatest Television Talk Show Hosts of all time (she was #11). She was one of only three personalities to make both the radio and the TV lists.

From approximately 2005 to 2008, she hosted a daily radio show, Sally Jessy Raphaël on Talknet (previously called Sally JR's Open House), on the Internet and in syndication to local radio stations. The show's flagship station was WVIE, Baltimore, Maryland and the show aired on AM stations in New England, the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, in addition to at least one station in Arizona. The show also aired on XM Satellite Radio's America's Talk channel from November 19, 2007 until its end. 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. She abruptly ended the show July 7, 2008.

On November 10, 2010, Raphaël, along with former talk show hosts Phil Donahue, Geraldo Rivera, Ricki Lake and Montel Williams, were invited as guests on The Oprah Winfrey Show.