Virginia Vallejo

Born on August 26, 1949, in Cartago, Valle del Cauca, Colombia, near her family’s ranch, Virginia Vallejo was the oldest of the four children of Juan Vallejo Jaramillo and Mary García Rivera. Her father was an entrepreneur. Her family was not only financially well-off, but was also politically powerful.

Her grandfather, Eduardo Vallejo Varela, was a minister of economy in the Colombian government from April 12, 1930 to 7 August. Her grandmother, Sofía Jaramillo Arango, could trace her family back to Alonso Jaramillo de Andrade Céspedes y Guzmán, a nobleman from Extremadura, Spain, who could trace his own lineage back to Emperor Charlemagne.

In 1950, Vallejo and her parents moved back to Bogotá, where the births of her younger siblings, brothers Felipe (1951) and Antonio (1955-2012), and sister Sofía (1957), occurred.

She began her education at the kindergarten run by President Carlos Lleras Restrepo’s sister, Elvira Lleras Restrepo. She then went on to study at the Anglo Colombian School, an institution with which she has a personal connection. It was co-founded by her great-uncle Jaime Jaramillo Arango, who was a professor of medicine and surgery, author, diplomat, and politician.

Virginia Vallejo got her first job as an English teacher in 1967 in the Centro Colombo Americano in Bogotá. She worked there until the end of 1968. In 1969, she started teaching in the presidency of Banco del Comercio.

When Vallejo was 19 or 20 years old, she married for the first time. Her husband was Fernando Francisco, CEO of CBS Security and Data, Zamorano and Giovanelli. He was a widower and 25 years senior to Vallejo. The ceremony took place in a civil court in Venezuela. However, the marriage did not last beyond two years and they divorced in 1971.

By 1972, Vallejo was employed as the director of public relations of Cervecería Andina. It was during this period that she received the offer of a television program in which Carlos Lemos Simmonds and Aníbal Fernández de Soto served as directors.

She married her second husband, David Stivel, an Argentinean television, theatre and film director, and head of the Clan Stivel, in 1978. Stivel was living in Colombia at the time after he was exiled by the military junta of his native country. In 1981, she sought divorce from Stivel but the subsequent paperwork took two years to finish.

There were three governmental television channels in Colombia until 1998. Two of those were commercial channels and one was for official use. The official channel was called Inravisión. It rented out time slots to programadoras, independent production houses that were often owned by prominent journalists and members of presidential families. This allowed her to work both as a news anchor and presenter of other types of programs.

She began her media career in 1972 as the presenter of ¡Oiga Colombia, Revista del Sábado’ and worked there for the next three years. Between 1973 and 1975, she was the host of musical shows ‘Éxitos 73’, ‘Éxitos 74 and ‘Éxitos 75’. In 1973, she joined TV Sucesos-A3 as a reporter and was promoted to the post of international editor in 1975, serving in that position until 1977.

She also served as the host of the quiz show ‘TV Crucigrama’, co-hosted a cooking show with celebrity chef Segundo Cabezas, and anchored a children’s TV show. Also in 1973, she was hired by TV magazine as a film critic.

In January 1978, she landed the job as the anchorwoman for the Noticiero 24 Horas. By then, she had become an internationally recognized media personnel and attended the inauguration of President Chiang Ching-kuo of Taiwan as an honoured guest of that government.

She received the Best Television Anchor of the APE, Asociación de Periodistas del Espectáculo (Association of Entertainment Journalists) award for three consecutive years (1978-80). She was also picked as the vice president of the Association of Colombian Announcers in 1978.