“Sally Jessy Raphael” Producer Shares 'Odd' Moment That Made One Couple Stand Out Among Show's Many Eccentric Guests
“Sally Jessy Raphael” Producer Shares 'Odd' Moment That Made One Couple Stand Out Among Show's Many Eccentric Guests
Virginia ChamleeFri, March 27, 2026 at 11:00 PM UTC
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Sally Jessy RaphaelCredit: Getty -
A producer for the show Sally Jessy Raphael is recounting the most memorable guest on the show
Burt Dubrow was a producer on The Sally Jessy Raphael Show — later shortened to Sally — which launched in 1983
"You saw things on our show that you just don't see much," Dubrow said of the guests
A producer for the The Sally Jessy Raphael Show is sharing who he found to be the daytime talk show's most memorable guests.
Burt Dubrow was a producer on The Sally Jessy Raphael Show — later shortened to Sally — which launched in 1983 and initially covered human interest subjects and hard-hitting news items. The show devolved in its later years, highlighting feuding relationships or sexual exploits in order to compete with the shock tactics dominating other daytime shows (like The Jerry Springer Show) in the 1990s.
On a recent episode of the Nostalgia Tonight with Joe Sibilia podcast, Dubrow said guests "had to have a good story."
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Burt DubrowCredit: Getty
Asked if he had a favorite guest from his many years producing daytime talk shows, Dubrow said one pair of guests comes to mind."There was a couple," Dubrow said. "This was in the early days of Sally."
Dubrow continued: "And they were married."
He estimated that the husband “was about, oh, thirties,” and the wife “was like in her eighties.”"That couple, and then I can remember at the end of the show, I went over to them and said, 'By the way, I don't know that we asked you, what was your wedding song that you danced to?'" he added. "And they told us — I forget what it was now — so, we played that song and they danced as we rolled credits. And all of a sudden he just laid this huge kiss on her. And I don't know — It was a bit odd to say the least."
"You saw things on our show that you just don't see much," Dubrow said.
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Elsewhere in the interview, Dubrow explained what made a good guest on the show, saying they needed to have "a good story."
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"The word 'story' is underrated," Dubrow explained. "Everybody has a story. Sally used to say that all the time to me. And way back when in the early days of the show, she used to say that. And frankly, I wasn't sure what she was talking about and then realized what she was talking about."
Dubrow added that a lot of the show was "topically driven," as well, saying, "we would come up with a topic or we'd see a topic in the news, and then we'd have to get a guest to match that topic."
"You didn't want somebody quiet. You didn't want somebody soft spoken. You didn't want someone that looked like they didn't care. You wanted someone that really was gonna jump out of the screen, and that's what we were looking for," he said.
The show ended its 19-year run in 2002.
The host of the show, Sally Jessy Raphael, spoke to PEOPLE in 2025 as she celebrated turning 90. She also spoke about the challenges of a daytime talk show today, saying that producers show concern that "they can't insure you, or they worry about insuring you."
"But they worried about insuring me when I was 60, so that would've been 30 years of no worries," she added. "That's their problem."
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
