Redhead Sally Jessy Raphael’s 2nd Grandson Just Graduated – At 88, She’s a Loving Grandma

• Sally Jessy Raphael was a well-known talk show host whose show aired for almost two decades before it got canceled.
• Years later, she enjoys her time as a doting grandmother. In her recent post on Facebook, she proudly shared a photo of her grandson to congratulate him on graduating.
• In several interviews, Raphael opened up about her differences with the producers of "The Sally Jessy Raphael Show" and even shared her beliefs regarding the show's cancellation.

If you grew up watching talk shows in the latter part of the last century, you would know the famous host with red glasses and short blonde hair, Sally Jessy Raphael.

With her impeccable hosting skills in "The Sally Jessy Raphael Show," which lasted almost two decades, Raphael was nominated several times for the Daytime Emmy Awards and became a two-time winner. However, things took a different turn, leading to the end of her show.

Once her show ended, Raphael disappeared from the screens as she was battling cancer. Years later, she spoke about how her health affected her hosting career.

During her time on the show, Raphael met several people and changed their lives in unimaginable ways. She was the first woman to host a show that talked about people and encouraged audience participation.

Where Is Sally Jessy Raphael Now?

Years after her show ended, Raphael, 88, now enjoys her time with her family. She is a doting grandmother who recently celebrated her grandson Kyle Romanoff's graduation from the University of Washington.

Raphael shared a photo of the boy dressed in a black gown and a graduation cap, standing beside his brother. Feeling proud as a grandmother, she wrote in the caption of the photo:

"I love my boys!"

Fans of the former host were delighted to see the Facebook post. They congratulated Raphael and posted messages of support in the comments section. One netizen said:

"Congratulations, Kyle!! Also, congratulations to you, Sally, for having such wonderful grandsons!"

"Congratulations to your grandson," another fan said. Meanwhile, other people congratulated the boy and his loving grandmother, wishing Kyle all the best.

Raphael now spends time with her grandchildren, but she faced a difficult period when her husband of 57 years passed away after battling Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Karl Soderlund, Raphael's longtime husband, breathed his last in August 2020 at 90.

The couple first met at a radio station where Soderlund worked as a general manager while Raphael hosted a show. They tied the knot soon after and stayed with each other through thick and thin. The former host cared for her beloved husband until his final days when his health condition slowly claimed his life.

This wasn't the first time Raphael lost a family member. Unfortunately, her 33-year-old daughter died in 1992 from a drug overdose, just weeks after her son met a car accident.

Why Did Sally Jessy Raphael's Show End?

Raphael's talk show, later renamed "Sally," ended in 2002, but the former host opened up about the show's cancellation years later in 2019, in an interview with Daily Mail.

Acknowledging that new competitors had entered the market and grabbed the audience's attention, Raphael revealed another reason she believes brought her talk show to its end.

She thinks the producers canceled the show after learning about her health condition. "All they needed was a 60-year-old that might have cancer. I was stupid enough to tell them," she confessed.

However, that was not the only time Raphael talked about her show's producers. In an episode of "Oprah: Where Are They Now?" she spoke about what she disliked while working on "The Sally Jessy Raphael Show."

"The last years of doing those Maury Povich/Jerry Spring shows? I hated them," Raphael admitted, referring to the direction her show took in its final years. She said she "didn't want to do" those episodes but was "betrayed" by some producers to do them.

Raphael also opened up about her iconic red eyeglasses. She realized her eyesight was getting poor when she couldn't read the text on the teleprompter during one of her shows. As a result, she acquired a pair of red eyeglasses, only because they were priced lower compared to other glasses.

However, when she wore them on the set of her show, her producers didn't like them. She revealed they "tried to change" her eyeglasses, but she fought to keep them.

While people thought Raphael knew of her show's end, she revealed it was a surprise to her. "[Network executives] told us that the show was going to go on," she said, adding that some crew members even asked her if she knew the show would continue because they wanted to plan their finances.

Besides looking after her husband and spending time with her family after the show's cancellation, Raphael hosted a radio show on Talknet, with listeners from New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, and Arizona tuning in.