Talk show
Raphael'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 1981 to 1987, but she is best known for hosting the television talk show The Sally Jessy Raphael 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 had not yet found the right one. Tunick gave Raphael a one-hour trial run on NBC's affiliate, WRC in Washington, D.C. 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.
One of those fans was iconic talk show host Phil Donahue, who happened to hear her show one night and liked how she related to the audience. His encouragement led to a tryout on television, where producer Burt Dubrow gave her a chance to be a guest host on his talk show. She was not very polished, but people who had loved her radio show were very positive about her being on TV. Her non-threatening and common-sense manner appealed to Dubrow, who believed she would gain more confidence as she got some TV experience. By mid-October 1983, she was given her own show on KSDK-TV in St. Louis. The Sally Jessy Raphael Show was only a half hour long, but it was the beginning of her successful career as a talk show host.
Raphael became known to television viewers for her oversized red-framed glasses, a trademark that began entirely by accident. The source of her famous red-framed glasses goes all the way back to her first broadcast news job. Raphael had difficulty reading the teleprompter and, with five minutes before air time, quickly went to a store across the street from the studio to purchase a pair of reading glasses. The only pair she could afford was an oversized red pair. While station managers disliked them, the audience seemed to think they looked good, so she kept wearing that style. In 1991 Raphael, and the talk show, featured in a cameo in the Paramount film The Addams Family.
By 2000, both Raphael and The Jerry Springer Show were in decline. As one media critic observed, Springer's ratings were the lowest they had been in three years, but Raphael's ratings were the lowest they had been in 12 years. Raphael 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 for Maury Povich, who had recently left Paramount Television to join USA's syndication arm, than they ever were for her own show. She celebrated her 3,500th episode in early 1998. By March 2002, it was announced that, after an 19-year run, her show was being cancelled. In 2002, Raphael was named by Talkers Magazine to both their 25 Greatest Radio Talk Show Hosts of all time (#5), and the 25 Greatest Television Talk Show Hosts of all time (#11). She was one of only three personalities to make both the radio and the TV lists.
From about 2005 to 2008, she hosted a daily radio show, Sally Jessy Raphael 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, broadcasting from Baltimore and the show aired on numerous AM stations in New England, the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, in addition to one station KWFM in South Tucson, Arizona. The show also aired on XM Satellite Radio's America's Talk channel from November 19, 2007, until its end eight months later. The name "Talknet" is a revival of the name of the old NBC Talknet, the now-defunct radio network that carried her previous radio show from 1981 to 1987. She abruptly ended the Talknet program July 7, 2008.
On November 10, 2010, Raphael, along with former famous national talk show hosts Phil Donahue, Geraldo Rivera, Ricki Lake and Montel Williams were invited to be guests on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Raphael offered to induct conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh (1951–2021), into the Radio Hall of Fame when he was voted into the Hall in 1993. Surprised by the offer, Limbaugh accepted, only to see Raphael use her speech to speak out against the vote and excoriate Limbaugh. The following day, longtime radio news commentator Paul Harvey used his radio program to defend Limbaugh, who was privately hurt by Raphael's betrayal. In an act of retribution, one of Limbaugh's staffers slipped a picture of Raphael without her makeup or trademark glasses (taken from one of Raphael's staffers, as both hosts worked in the same studio at the time) onto Limbaugh's television program without his knowledge.
In 2014, Raphael hosted the Logo web series Sally Jessy Rides. In 2024, Raphael had a cameo in the Everybody Still Hates Chris episode "Everybody Still Hates Drew’s Brother".
