Charo

María Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza, professionally known by her stage name Charo, is a Spanish American actress, singer, comedian, and flamenco guitarist.
Charo began playing guitar at the age of 9 and trained under the famed Andrés Segovia. In 1966 she married bandleader Xavier Cugat and they moved to the United States. In the late 1960s and 1970s, she became a ubiquitous presence on American television, frequently appearing as a guest star on series such as "Laugh-In, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat," and "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson". She is known for her uninhibited and exuberant manner, vague age, heavy Spanish accent, and the catch-phrase "cuchi-cuchi."
As a musician, she has performed and recorded in various styles for five decades. She released a series of disco recordings in the 1970s with Salsoul Records, most notably "Dance a Little Bit Closer" (1977). In 1995 her flamenco album "Guitar Passion" (1994) won the Female Pop Album of the Year award at the Billboard International Latin Music Conference and was named best female Latin pop album by "Billboard". In an interview Charo said, "Around the world I am known as a great musician. But in America I am known as the cuchi-cuchi girl. That’s okay because cuchi-cuchi has taken me all the way to the bank."
Early life.
Charo was born in the town of Murcia, Spain. Her birth date and year has been a matter of some dispute. Her Spanish passport gives her name as María del Rosario Mercedes Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza. 
Charo has occasionally claimed that she was enrolled in a convent as a young child and remained there until she was 15, when a nun stated that she belonged in show business. In the most colorful version of this childhood, Charo's grandmother hired a music professor to give her weekly classical guitar lessons, and he became the first man to enter the convent.
 In a 2005 interview she reminisced: "The institution had great young teachers and students. Everything was a charity. Mr. Segovia, between concerts that's when he'd come, and if you'd been there a year and you weren't good, you'd go out and they would give your place to another young kid."
Charo has stated in several interviews that she graduated with honors at age 16.
Charo was discovered as a young performer by bandleader Xavier Cugat, whom she later wed on August 7, 1966. When they married, Cugat was 66 and had already been married four times, (Rita Montaner, Carmen Castillo, Lorraine Allen, and Abbe Lane), although reports sometimes listed fewer marriages. An April 1966 column by Earl Wilson on the couple's wedding plans announced, "Sixty-year-old Xavier Cugat and his 20-year-old Spanish girlfriend and singing star Charo hope to marry in San Cugat, Spain, in a few days if Cugat can convince church authorities his two divorces should not be counted against him since he wasn't married in church."
The couple was the first to have their nuptials in Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. She later claimed that her marriage to Cugat had been merely a business contract, a way for him to legally bring her over to the United States where he was based.
Year of birth controversy.
Charo's year of birth has been the subject of dispute for many years. Official documents in her birthplace of Murcia, including her original Spanish birth certificate and passport, as well as her American naturalization papers, state that her birth date is March 13, 1941. After immigrating to the United States, Charo said that she was born in 1947, then changed it to 1949. In her final change, she asserted in a 1977 court hearing that her passport and naturalization papers were wrong and that her birthdate was January 15, 1951.
The performer has said in interviews that her parents allowed her to falsify her age to appear older when marrying 66-year-old Xavier Cugat in 1966, although according to her later claims, that would have made her 15 at the time. However, as noted previously, she has stated in many interviews that she was attending school in Madrid at that age and graduated at 16, not having yet begun her performing career. She has never clarified the discrepancy. Numerous articles and interviews published shortly before and at the time of her wedding placed her birth year between 1945 and 1946. In 1964 Charo was referred to as Cugat's "18-year-old protégée." An April 1966 column on the wedding plans stated she was 20 and Cugat was 60. Many sources identified her as 21 on the day of her wedding.
In October 1977the same year in which Charo filed for divorce from Cugat and became a naturalized American citizenU.S. District Judge Roger Foley in Las Vegas allowed the 1951 birth year as official, with the performer providing sworn affidavits from her parents in support of her claim, a claim that has been viewed with skepticism. Commenting on the disputes over her age, she has said that the public's disbelief could prove advantageous: "But if people really believe I'm older, that's fine. Don't be surprised if I come out with my own cosmetics, a new energy bar, and maybe some vitamins."
Career.
Charo's first U.S. TV appearance was on "The Today Show." From 1965 to 1967 she performed on "The Ed Sullivan Show" four times with her husband, Xavier Cugat, and his orchestra. She began appearing on "Laugh-In" in 1968, appearing in segments lasting a few minutes near the end of each episode with Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. Her almost complete lack of fluency in the English language was played as a comic focus, with the two hosts laughing at her mangled English. It was around this time that she began using "cuchi-cuchi" in the public arena.
1970s.
She was headlining Vegas shows by 1971 and reportedly being paid as much as Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, or Dean Martin. In 1977 she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. That same year she filed for divorce from Cugat, a petition that was granted April 14, 1978.
On August 11, 1978, she married her second husband, Kjell Rasten, a producer, in South Lake Tahoe, California, in a civil ceremony attended by 30 guests. Rasten soon became his wife's manager. The couple has one child, a son, Shel Rasten (born 1981), who is the drummer for the heavy metal band Treazen.
Throughout the 1970s she was a highly visible personality, appearing eight times on "The Love Boat," as well as on variety and talk shows such as "Donny & Marie," "Tony Orlando and Dawn", "The Captain and Tennille", "The John Davidson Show", "The Mike Douglas Show", which she guest-hosted at least once, and the short-lived "The Brady Bunch Variety Hour".
In 1975 "Dallas Morning News" critic Harry Bowman wrote that the ABC network had "penciled in . . . a half-hour comedy starring the uninhibited wife of Xavier Cugat" and commented, "This is probably the worst idea of the season." By October of that year, the performer was promoting a special slated for November, but the special did not actually appear until May 1976.
A TV listing for August 24, 1976, shows what appears to be an unsold pilot airing on ABC at 8:30 p.m. CST: ""Charo and the Sergeant"—Situation comedy starring Charo Cugat. Charo's first U.S. job is to be a dancer at an off-limits nightclub, and her conservative Marine Corps husband finds out. The few episodes that were taped ended up being broadcast on the American Armed Forces Network overseas."
By the late 1970s Charo was being mentioned as an example of how overexposure could damage a celebrity. One such article quoted the "Q score" of Performer Q, Steve Levitt's celebrity popularity rating service, to show that the performer's popularity declined slightly even as her familiarity increased:
1980s.
In 1988, she appeared on Pee-Wee Herman's Christmas special, playing guitar and singing "Feliz Navidad".
2000s.
She was named Best Flamenco Guitarist in "Guitar Player Magazine's" readers' poll twice.
Charo returned to the dance music scene in June 2008 with the single "España Cañi," which was released through Universal Wave Records.
In April 2010 Charo made a guest appearance on "Dancing with the Stars". She made an appearance on "" on February 22, 2011, where she promoted a new song, "Sexy! Sexy!" In July 2011 Charo appeared as a celebrity guest judge on the fifth episode of "RuPaul's Drag U", Season 2. In May 2013 she appeared on the final episode of "Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23." In June 2015 she appeared in an episode of "Celebrity Wife Swap," where she swapped with former "Love Boat" costar, Jill Whelan. The show prominently featured her husband–manager, Kjell Rasten, and her sister, Carmen, who served as Charo's stylist.
On March 1, 2017, Charo was revealed as one of the contestants who would compete on season 24 of "Dancing with the Stars." She was paired with professional dancer Keo Motsepe. On April 3, 2017, Charo and Motsepe were the second couple eliminated from the competition and finished in 11th place.
Later life.
Charo and her husband, Kjell Rasten, moved to Hawaii to raise her son. Because of the large number of people of Japanese descent in Hawaii, Charo learned to speak Japanese. They eventually moved back to Beverly Hills, where they were living as of 2015.
Kjell Rasten died by suicide on Monday, February 18, 2019. He was 78. Charo publicly stated, "In recent years, his health began to decline and he developed a rare and horrible skin disease called Bullous pemphigoid. He also became very depressed. That, along with the many medications he needed to take, became too much for him, and he ended his suffering."