Danuta Pfeiffer

**Danuta Pfeiffer** (née **Rylko**, formerly **Soderman**) (born February 22, 1949) is an author and a retired news reader and reporter on television and radio. She is best known for co-hosting _The 700 Club_, a Christian talk show, with Pat Robertson and Ben Kinchlow from 1983 to 1988.

## Early life

She was born in England after World War II to a father who was from Poland and worked as a sculptor. Her mother was a nurse and English.

Danuta Rylko and her parents moved to the United States shortly after she was born. She grew up in northern Michigan, near Bellaire. She began her career in San Diego, California as a newsreader on the radio, and was co-host of _SunUp San Diego_ on KFMB-TV from 1976 to 1983.

## Working for the Christian Broadcasting Network

Rylko was hired by the Christian Broadcasting Network after becoming a born-again Christian. She was hired to be their reporter in Jerusalem, but was instead made co-host of _The 700 Club_ days after arriving at CBN's headquarters in Virginia Beach, Virginia. She later wrote: "But no one ever asked me about my politics. I was converted by association from my liberal democratic feminism to conservative Republican fundamentalism. I felt like a wolf in sheep’s clothing adapting somewhat awkwardly to becoming one of the sheep."

She was the first news reporter to tell the story of the John Anthony Walker spy ring. She interviewed Walker's daughter, Laura Walker Snyder, for CBN. During the interview, Snyder said her father of bullied his children to try to make them agree to be spies when they didn't want to.

She married Swedish businessman Kai Soderberg in 1983, six months after joining _The 700 Club_. Soderman wanted to kill himself and was addicted to alcohol and because of this, the two of them divorced after she moved back to California.  She was fired by Robertson in 1988 after he found out that Soderman had been married and divorced two times before.

## After CBN

She stopped being a Christian after her experiences at CBN and went back to San Diego where she hosted  _Danuta Time_, on KSDO radio in the late 1980s and was a news commentator on KUSI-TV in the early 1990s.
She moved to Colorado, where she wrote a newspaper column for the _Colorado Eagle_, before moving to Oregon  in 1994 to be closer to her family.

There she met and married her second husband, Robin Pfeiffer, a winery owner, in 1994.  Since 1994, she has been co-owner, with her husband, of Pfeiffer Winery in Oregon. In 2016, she supported Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign.

## Writing books

Pfeiffer has written a book called _Chiseled: A Memoir of Identity, Duplicity, and Divine Wine_ (2015) about her life in general as well as her time with CBN.

Her most recent book is _Libertas_, the first book in a trilogy (three-book series) called _A Pocket Full of Seeds_, which is a fictional story that takes place in the 19th century and is about runaway slaves who went on the difficult Oregon Trail to seek freedom in the Northwest of the United States.

## List of books she has written

- _Watersafe Your Baby in One Week_ (as Danuta Rylko), 1983
- _Dear Danuta: Cries and Whispers of Searching Hearts_ (as Danuta Soderman), 1986
- _A passion for living_ (co-authors: Danuta Soderman & Kai Soderman), 1987
- _Chiseled: A Memoir of Identity, Duplicity, and Divine Wine_ (as Danuta Pfeiffer), 2015
- _Libertas, Book One in the Pocket Full of Seeds Trilogy, (_as Danuta Pfeiffer_),_ 2021
- _Firmitas, Book Two in the Pocket Full of Seeds Trilogy_, 2022

## Other websites

- personal website
- Inside the 700 Club: Pat Robertson's former co-host speaks out - article by Danuta Pfeiffer for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
- C-SPAN interview on her memoir, 2017