[9][10] Pallete grew up in Lima, where she attended Collegio Villa María, a private Catholic primary and secondary school for girls.

[14] She moved to Los Angeles, California in early 1953,[15] to dub a film, Sabotear en la selva, in English, and in February 1953, she signed a long term movie contract with Wayne-Fellows Productions, the production company owned by her future husband, John Wayne, and his associate, Robert Fellows.

[1] Pallete rented a studio inside the Fernleaf Courtyard in Corona Del Mar, California, during the 1960s.

[20] Pallete authored Pilar Wayne's Favorite and Fabulous Recipes (ISBN 1-55859-474-4), a cook book, which was published by PAX Pub Co. in 1983.

[21][22][23] She authored John Wayne: My Life With the Duke (ISBN 9780070686625), a biographical memoir, which was co-written with the Irvine-based freelance journalist, Alex Thorleifson, and published by McGraw-Hill in 1987.

Pallete married her first husband, Richard Junior Weldy (1921–1995), who was seven years her senior, an Irish executive at Pan American-Grace Airways, in Lima[27] on 8 July 1950.

[33] The couple were married in the garden of the Keauhou, Hawaii home of Senator William Henry Hill[34] on 1 November 1954,[35] the same day as Wayne's divorce from Esperanza "Chata" Baur, a Mexican actress, was finalized.

She moved out of their house in 1971, however, she stated they were never separated or divorced and has maintained her stance that they remained married until Wayne's death from stomach cancer on 11 June 1979, at the age of 72.

[24][59] Pallete married her fourth husband, Jesse Lloyd Upchurch (1924–2018),[60][61] who was four years her senior, an American travel company executive, in Johnson, Texas on 22 May 1998.

On 25 January 1990, she let the party of Orange County use her home for a US$1,000 per-couple, fundraising cocktail reception for Senetor Pete Wilson in his campaign for governor.

[58][67] She was friends with the President-elect and 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, and his second wife, Marla Maples, during their six-year-marriage.

She underwent surgery at the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, California on 24 May 2006 and revealed that she was cancer-free that August.

[58] In September 1956, Confidential magazine founder Robert Harrison generated front-page headlines around the world when he allegedly was shot in the shoulder during a safari in the Dominican Republic by Richard Weldy, a travel agency owner and Pallete's first husband.

[69] The shooter, Weldy, variously described as a "jungle trapper and guide"[70] or "a big game hunter,"[71] purportedly harbored a grudge over a Confidential story about Pallete.

According to newspaper accounts, Weldy fled the scene, leaving Harrison to die alone in the jungle with his blonde girlfriend; the two were eventually rescued by either the Dominican Army or local police and boy scouts.