[1] He married for the first time on 21 January 1981 and shortly after became the father of twin girls, socialites Sara and Tristana Esteves Cardoso, born in Lisbon.
Eventually, he co-founded (with Pedro Ayres Magalhães, Ricardo Camacho e Francisco Sande e Castro) Portugal's first independent record label called Fundação Atlântica, which would publish Portuguese bands such as Xutos e Pontapés, Delfins, and Sétima Legião.
One of his more notable and controversial appearances was on the SIC channel talk-show A Noite da Má-Língua along with Manuel Serrão, Rui Zink, Rita Blanco, Júlia Pinheiro and other guests.
Esteves Cardoso began his career as a journalist when he started contributing a column to the weekly paper Expresso, later collected and published in four volumes, all of which sold over 100,000 copies and are still in print.
In 1988, with Paulo Portas, he founded the very successful and innovative weekly paper O Independente but he left the board in 1991 to dedicate his time to the magazine K, financed by Valentim de Carvalho, SOCI and later also by Carlos Barbosa.