Virginia Vallejo De Escobar

Biography

Virginia Vallejo García (born 26 August 1949) is a Colombian author, journalist, television and radio director, anchorwoman, columnist, socialite, and political asylee in the United States of America. She is one of the most relevant media personalities of her native country, known for her interviews of presidents, politicians, international celebrities, musicians, authors and scientists. She has been international editor of television newscasts and also anchorwoman, when she won twice the prize as the best anchorperson of Colombia. Her programs for TV Impacto, her own company, obtained the highest ratings compared to her competition. She was image and model of Di Lido pantyhose, with commercials made in Venice, Rio de Janeiro, San Juan, Bogotá and Cartagena de Indias. She has been invited by foreign governments, like Israel and Taiwan, to cover historical events. Virginia was the only Colombian journalist in charge of the radio transmission of the “Wedding of the century” between Charles and Diana, in London, on July 29, 1981, and the first journalist to interview Pablo Escobar in 1983, when he was just an aspiring politician. She also presented other type of programs, like musical shows with the most famous singers and orchestras of her time. Due to her voice, education, beauty and elegance, Vallejo has become an icon of the Colombian media, and thanks to her unique story, a contemporary legend. She is now a bestseller author, translated to many languages. On 18 July 2006, the DEA took her out of Colombia in a special flight to save her life and cooperate with the Department of Justice in high-profile cases, after she had signaled several Colombian presidents and politicians as beneficiaries or accomplices of the leading cocaine cartels. In 2007, she published her first book, Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar, which led the Colombian Supreme Court to reopen the cases of the Palace of Justice siege in 1985, and the assassination of the presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán in 1989. The book was translated to fifteen languages and made into a movie in 2018, with the Spanish actress Penélope Cruz in the role of the journalist. Since 2006, Virginia Vallejo lives in Miami, Florida. In 2009, she became a columnist of a Venezuelan opposition newspaper, and, in 2019, television journalist for the international channel Actualidad RT. On May 1, 2025, she launched her new book, El alucinante País Dorado, the first of a trilogy of novels inspired in the recent history of Colombia and her personal life.

== Early life ==

=== Family and childhood === Virginia Vallejo was born on 26 August 1949 in Cartago, Valle del Cauca, Colombia, near her family's ranch. Her parents were Juan Vallejo Jaramillo, an entrepreneur, and Mary García Rivera. Her paternal grandmother, Sofía Jaramillo Arango, was a descendant of Alonso Jaramillo de Andrade Céspedes y Guzmán, a nobleman from Extremadura, Spain. Several members of her family were ministers, writers and ambassadors, such as her paternal grandfather Eduardo Vallejo Varela, minister of finance (1930); her granduncle Alejandro Vallejo Varela, writer and close friend of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán; and his granduncle Jaime Jaramillo Arango, minister of education (1934), ambassador to several countries in Europe, and co-founder of the Anglo Colombian School. In 1950, the young family returned to Bogotá, where her siblings, Felipe (1951), Antonio (1955–2012), and Sofía (1957) were born. She attended the Anglo Colombian School.

=== Early career === In 1967 and 1968, she worked as an English teacher in the Centro Colombo Americano in Bogotá and, in 1969, in the presidency of Banco del Comercio. In 1972, while she was working as director of public relations of Cervecería Andina, she received an invitation to join an upcoming television program directed by Carlos Lemos Simmonds and Aníbal Fernández de Soto.

== Career in the media ==

=== Introduction === Until 1998, there were only three television channels in Colombia that belonged to the Government: two commercial and one official. Inravisión, the official broadcasting entity, leased spaces to independent television producers known as programadoras, many owned by prominent journalists or presidential families. This was the reason why Vallejo could work simultaneously as a news anchor and presenter of other programs.

=== 1970s === From 1972 to 1975, she was as the presenter of "¡Oiga Colombia, Revista del Sábado!", a program directed by Carlos Lemos Simmonds and Fernández de Soto. From 1973 to 1975, she was the host of the television musical shows "Éxitos 73", "Éxitos 74" and "Éxitos 75", produced by THOY, the programadora of the family of President Julio César Turbay. In 1973, she began working as a reporter on TV Sucesos-A3, the newscast directed by Alberto Acosta; and, from 1975 to 1977, she became the international editor. In the early and mid seventies, she hosted other television programs, like the quiz show TV Crucigrama, a cooking show with chef Segundo Cabezas, and a program for children. In January 1978, she became the anchorwoman of Noticiero 24 Horas, which aired at 7:00 PM, and was directed by Mauricio Gómez, Ernesto Rodríguez Medina and Sergio Arboleda. In March, the Government of Taiwan invited her to the inauguration of President Chiang Ching-kuo. The same year, she was elected as the vice-president of the board of directors of the ACL, Asociación Colombiana de Locutores (Association of Colombian Speakers). In 1978, 1979 and 1980, she won the award as the Best Television Anchor of the APE, Asociación de Periodistas del Espectáculo (Association of Entertainment Journalists). In 1979, she co-starred in the movie Colombia Connection by Gustavo Nieto Roa. In November, she appeared in Town & Country, opening the section The Beautiful Women of El Dorado. In 1979 and 1980, she presented ¡Cuidado con las Mujeres!, a program by RTI Producciones, directed by David Stivel.

=== 1980s === In 1981, she founded her own programadora, TV Impacto, with the journalist Margot Ricci. That same year, the Government of Israel invited them to do a special program about The Holy Land. In 1980 and 1982, she worked at Caracol Radio. She was the only journalist sent by a Colombian media outlet to London, to transmit the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer on July 29, 1981. Vallejo's broadcast for Caracol lasted three hours. She covered the Miss Colombia pageant for the same station until 1985. Between 1981 and 1983, she directed her program ¡Al Ataque! She was the first television journalist to interview Pablo Escobar in January 1983. The interview was filmed at the garbage dump of Medellín. During the interview Pablo Escobar described the charity project Medellín Sin Tugurios (Medellín without Slums), launched by him and his partners. Vallejo’s interview propelled Escobar to the national stage. In 1983 and 1984, she presented Hoy por Hoy, Magazín del Lunes (Magazine Today, Monday) at 7 pm. In 1984, she made a television commercial for Medias Di Lido (pantyhose), in Venice, Italy, followed by another three in Rio de Janeiro, San Juan and Cartagena. In 1983 and 1984, she presented the musical El Show de las Estrellas, directed by Jorge Barón. In 1984, she became the international editor of the Grupo Radial Colombiano (a network founded by the Cali Cartel), directed by Carlos Lemos Simmonds. In 1985, she became the anchorwoman of the newscast Telediario, directed by Arturo Abella. In 1985, she appeared on the covers of Harper's Bazaar and Cosmopolitan. Also, in Elenco, a magazine of El Tiempo that presented her as "the symbol of an era". In 1988, she won a scholarship from the German Government, and she studied economic journalism in Berlin at the Internationales Institut für Journalismus.