In the 1950s, before she became the internationally famous sex symbol Raquel Welch, she was known as Jo Raquel Tejada. This was a period of her life where she was a young woman, a student, and a beauty queen, primarily living in Southern California.
Tejada grew up in San Diego, California, where her family moved when she was a child. She attended La Jolla High School. Even as a young girl, she was striking, with her strong features and charisma foreshadowing her later screen presence.
Raquel (then Jo Tejada) studied ballet from a young age and danced for about 10 years. In high school, she was active in theater and won beauty contests. She earned the titles of Miss La Jolla, Miss San Diego, and later Maid of California in her teens. These pageants gave her early recognition and confidence in front of audiences.
She graduated from high school in 1958 and won a scholarship to study theater at San Diego State College (then San Diego State University). Her goal at the time was to become a stage actress.
In 1959, she married her high school sweetheart, James Welch, and took his last name. This is when she began to use the name Raquel Welch, which she would keep for the rest of her life.
While still in San Diego, she had a brief stint as a weather reporter for a local television station. However, her breakthrough into Hollywood and her rise to stardom didn’t happen until the mid-1960s.
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