Born:
September 5, 1940
Jo
Raquel Tejada was born in Chicago, Illinois. Rachel
was the oldest of three children born to Armando Carlos Tejada and
Josephine Sarah Hall. Her father, an aerospace engineer, was an immigrant
from Bolivia of Castilian Spanish extraction and her mother was an
American of Irish descent.
In
1947 Armando moved Raquel and the rest of her family to San Diego.
Racquel took dancing lessons and won severa beauty pagents prior to
entering San Diego State College on a theater arts scholarship. Raquel
married her high school sweetheart, James Welch, a year after she
started college. Life was very busy for Raquel as she became the mother
of two children and took a job as a weather forecaster. Her schedule
was so busy she eventually quit college.
When
Raquel's marriage failed she and moved her children to Texas where
she modeled for Neiman-Marcus and worked as a waitress. Though Racquel
had originally planned to move to New York to start an acting career,
she moved to Los Angeles and began to work as an actress in movies
instead. Although most of Raquel's movies were not very successful,
her beauty made her a popular acting personality in the 1960s and
1970's. She even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Learn
more about Rachel Welch at the following websites: