Comment by EA-3167
You have to remember the "one particle in the pair fails to escape the event horizon" explanation is a simplification of the alleged reality, which is the scattering of particles (or fields) in the presence of an event horizon. As far as I know there is no intuitive, non-mathematical way to describe this accurately, so science communicators of all stripes tend to approximate it in ways that can mislead the audience.
The man himself (Hawking) said: "One might picture this negative energy flux in the following way. Just outside the event horizon there will be virtual pairs of particles, one with negative energy and one with positive energy. It should be emphasized that these pictures of the mechanism responsible for the thermal emission and area decrease are heuristic only and should not be taken too literally."
Not a physicist, but the more accurate “intuitive” explanation I read is that an accelerating observer sees thermal radiation in a vacuum. This is called the Unruh effect [0]. And since a black hole requires an accelerated observer to not be pulled in you will always have thermal radiation coming from the black hole UNLESS you are free falling into it. Physicists please correct me where I’m wrong!
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_effect