lit a candle 9 Sept 2026Founded a magazine that hit a million copies on day one and then just kept going. Not bad for someone who started chasing stories in 1962. The man knew how to build something people wanted.
Their story
Jesus Gallegos Rosales, known to readers and screens as Chucho Gallegos, and to colleagues as El Chicuelo, was born in Mexico City on 17 December 1941 and died there on 7 September 2026, aged 84. Infobae, Eje Central, and Campeche HOY all give that birth date and place. Diario Basta,…
Jesus Gallegos Rosales, known to readers and screens as Chucho Gallegos, and to colleagues as El Chicuelo, was born in Mexico City on 17 December 1941 and died there on 7 September 2026, aged 84. Infobae, Eje Central, and Campeche HOY all give that birth date and place. Diario Basta, the paper where he was still director of entertainment at his death, said he died at 17:08 that Monday at Hospital General La Raza. Gustavo Adolfo Infante, who called Gallegos his teacher, wrote on X that the death came around 7 p.m. the same day. The date is pinned. The exact minute is not, because those two contemporary accounts do not match. This page is only the Mexico City entertainment journalist who founded TVyNovelas. It is not Armando Gallegos of TVyNovelas, and not any other Jesus Gallegos.
He spent his first years in colonia Obrera. After his father came back from work as a bracero in the United States, the family moved to Pantitlan. Eje Central describes a modest household. The father's name and the mother's name are not published in the sources used here, and they are not invented. Before the newsroom, he studied for three years to become a teacher at the Escuela Normal Superior de Maestros. The news accounts do not say whether he took a teaching diploma. They do say the classroom gave way to reporting.
The start of the working life is dated 1962. Infobae places him that year on the weekly Hoy and on evening papers including Atisbos and ABC. Campeche HOY names Atisbos and ABC as the first jobs, then El Sol de Mexico in 1965, where he moved onto the entertainment desk. By 1968 he was holding three jobs at once: El Sol, the listings magazine Tele-Guia, and Hoy Domingo, where he was editor-in-chief and reporter. That is where he crossed paths with Jacobo Zabludovsky, who named him "el reportero de lo insolito," the reporter of the unusual. The nickname stuck because the work was already a chase: waiting, asking, and writing the private lives of people the public thought it knew.
The magazine that made him a national name appeared in 1979. El Financiero says he founded it as TV Novelas, with Veronica Castro and Rogelio Guerra, stars of Los ricos tambien lloran, on the first cover, and that the title shifted slightly to TVyNovelas in 1981. Infobae says he directed the magazine for 26 years and that the first issue printed a million copies. Under him it reached the United States, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina. He also created the TVyNovelas awards. El Financiero dates the first edition to 1983. The same paper says he left the direction in 2000 and stayed on as a columnist for the next 20 years. Infobae's "26 years" and El Financiero's "left the direction in 2000" are both printed. They do not agree. This page does not pick one year as exclusive fact. What both agree on is the thing readers remember: he built the magazine that turned telenovelas into a weekly national habit.
The interviews were the real archive. Over six decades he sat with Maria Felix, Juan Gabriel, Agustin Lara, Julio Iglesias, Luis Miguel, and Vicente Fernandez, and, in other obituaries, also with names such as Salma Hayek, Thalia, Veronica Castro, and Maribel Guardia. Campeche HOY, drawing on his own recollection, says that to get Julio Iglesias he stayed nearly a month in Las Vegas until the Spanish singer would sit. The paper paraphrases that stay. It is not placed inside quotation marks here. He knew Luis Miguel as a boy, and later covered some of the hardest chapters of that family story, including the controversies around Luis Rey. He knew Vicente Fernandez from 1970. Under his direction, TVyNovelas later published material about the singer's private life that landed hard. Those are not gossip footnotes. They are how a generation of Mexican readers learned who the stars were when the cameras were off.
Radio ran beside the magazines. Infobae lists La Hora Domecq, Radio Trece, Radio Formula, and Radio Centro. Campeche HOY lists La Hora Domecq, Radio Trece, Radio Formula, and La Crema y la Nata. Both lists are printed. They are not collapsed into one station roster. In 2006 he wrote a column for Reforma. He also appeared on television, including a long 2020 sit-down with Gustavo Adolfo Infante on El minuto que cambio mi destino, where he walked through the birth of the magazine, the awards, Tele-Guia, and the early jobs. That program is the clearest surviving record of his voice. No English Wikipedia page was found for this person, and none is invented here. No official X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or personal website homepage was verified, so none is linked.
He kept a later desk. Diario Basta, founded on 16 August 2010, hired him as the person in charge of entertainment. Infobae and Diario Basta both say he was still director of espectaculos there when he died. An August 2026 column in that paper, written while he was alive, called him the colleague who made a newsroom feel like a home, and thanked him for memory that is not learned from a manual. In July 2026 the government of Veracruz gave him the Jorge Saldana distinction for 64 years of editorial work. He was still on the job.
The last illness was public only in pieces. In August 2026 he was hospitalized at Star Medica Lomas Verdes with internal hemorrhages and heavy blood loss. Infante said he had reached Gallegos's wife, Paty, after two days of trying, and that doctors had found a bacterial infection. Infante also said, then, that Gallegos did not have cancer. El Financiero reported that blood donors were asked for. He went home. On the afternoon of 7 September the picture changed again. Gil Barrera, identified by Univision as editorial director of TVyNovelas, said Gallegos was back in intensive care at Hospital La Raza. Diario Basta later wrote that the bacterial infection had led to complications, including hemorrhages, and that he died there. El Espectador noted that no public medical certificate names the infection, by itself, as the official cause. The safe public line is the one the hospital timeline supports: complications after a bacterial infection, internal bleeding, and a return to intensive care. No disease is added here that no source names. Cancer is not added.
He leaves a magazine, a prize, a radio trail, and a method. The method was patience. He told Infante, speaking of the day his first daughter Adriana was born, that children change a life, because suddenly someone depends on you. He said he earned 200 pesos, a good wage for a single young man, until that birth. He said he married twice. The first wife's name is not widely published. His last wife is identified in 2026 reports as Paty. A surname for her is not used here, because it is not in a written source used for this page. He told Infante he had five children: four from the first marriage and one from the second. Public names tied to him are Adriana, whom he called his eldest, and Emiliano, the youngest, known as Emmy Graves and linked by TVyNovelas to the band Lips. The other three names are not established in the public record used here. Funeral arrangements were not pinned. He kept most of the family off the entertainment pages he spent his life writing. Mexican entertainment journalism still reads like a descendant of that desk.
Biography adapted from Infobae 8 Sep 2026; Diario Basta 7 Sep 2026; El Financiero 7 Sep 2026; Eje Central 7 Sep 2026; Campeche HOY 7 Sep 2026..
In their own words
“Definitivamente los hijos te cambian la vida. Cuando nacio mi primera hija, yo ganaba 200 pesos, que era un buen sueldo para un muchacho soltero y reventado, pero cuando tiene a un hijo, te cambia la vida porque ya es alguien que depende de ti.”
Chucho Gallegos, recalling the birth of his first daughter Adriana, in his interview with Gustavo Adolfo Infante on El minuto que cambio mi destino, as published by Eje Central, 7 September 2026. Printed here as that account gives the line. The sense: children change a life because someone then depe
“el reportero de lo insolito”
Jacobo Zabludovsky's name for him, not Gallegos's own sentence. Reported by Infobae, 8 September 2026, from their years together at Hoy Domingo. Use as a nickname, with attribution.
“Estoy en posibilidades de confirmarles que alrededor de las 7pm de este lunes 7 de septiembre fallecio el gran periodista Chucho Gallegos, fundador de la revista TVyNovelas y maestro mio. El 'Chicuelo' fallece a los 84 anos de edad. Hasta siempre amigo.”
Gustavo Adolfo Infante, on X, 7 September 2026, as quoted by Infobae and El Financiero. This is Infante, not Gallegos. Used for the death confirmation and the teacher relationship, not as a self-quote.
Photos
1Close portrait of Mexican entertainment journalist Chucho Gallegos (Jesus Gallegos Rosales), an older man in a dark green sweater over a collared shirt. Same archive portrait described by Infobae's 8 September 2026 obituary. Not Armando Gallegos and not another Jesus Gallegos.
by People Forever
That's what they called him? El Chicuelo?