Silvio Santos
Silvio Santos, real name Senor Abravanel (born December 12, 1930), is a Brazilian TV show host and entrepreneur. He is the owner of Grupo Silvio Santos, whose holdings include SBT, the second largest television network in the country. His net worth was US$2.3 billion in 2013.
He is also the only celebrity in the country on the list of billionaires by Forbes magazine. The magazine also states that "there is no one more famous than Silvio Santos in Brazil.
Early Life
Senor Abravanel is the son of Sephardic Jewish immigrants. His father, Alberto Abravanel, was born in Thessalonica, Greece in 1897, and his mother, Rebecca Caro, was born in Smyrna, Ottoman Empire in 1907. Both died in Rio de Janeiro (in 1976 and 1989 respectively) and are buried side by side in the Cemitério Comunal Israelita do Caju.
Silvio Santos worked on the streets of Rio de Janeiro as a street vendor at the age of 14. During this period, he was invited to work in a radio station, but as he made more money as a camelô, a Brazilian name for a street vendor, he left the broadcaster job a month later.