Larry King’s widow Shawn King has opened up on her husband’s cause of death as well as sharing his last moments
The veteran TV host who died on January 23 was 87 years
In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, Shawn King said her husband died as a result of sepsis, a life-threatening condition that occurs in reaction to an infection.
Earlier in January, Larry Ling was treated for Covid-19, but according to Shawn King, he had recovered from the illness by the time the sepsis occurred.
“It was an infection, it was sepsis,”
“Well, he was finally ready to go, I will tell you that. You know, he never wanted to go but his sweet little body was just, it had just been hit so many times with so many things and once we heard the word COVID, all of our hearts just sunk.
“But he beat it, you know, he beat it, but it did take its toll and then the unrelated infection finally is what took him, but boy, he was not gonna go down easily.”
In the same interview, Shawn King said she and her husband were able to speak via FaceTime while he was in the hospital.
“It was hard for him to talk, but the one message that he wanted to make sure I heard was, ‘I love you, take care of the boys,’” she said.
The radio legend battled various health issues in recent years. He is survived by Shawn, 61, their two sons, 21-year-old Chance and 20-year-old Cannon, plus Larry King, Jr., 59, whom he shared with ex-wife, Annette Kaye. Shawn told ET the family is still processing his death.
“We laid him to rest this morning. And in the Jewish faith, they do it very quickly, so you almost don’t have time to, for me, to process,” she said in the interview airing on Wednesday. “I’m still processing. And as are the boys, the whole family is just, you know, yeah.”
Larry had filed for divorce from Shawn, his wife of more than 20 years, for the second time in August 2019. The Larry King Live host was married eight times to seven women. It’s unclear what the estranged couple’s status was at the time of his death, but a hearing on their divorce was set for April.
In February 2020, Larry told People he would “always care” for his wife, but that “it just hit a point where we didn’t get along.”
“We had a big age difference and that eventually takes its toll,” he admitted. “It became an issue. Also, [Shawn] is a very religious Mormon and I’m an agnostic atheist, so that eventually causes little problems. We overcame a lot, but eventually it became a ships-passing-in-the-night situation.”
Although Larry was raised Jewish, he explained in 2005 he’s “not a religious Jew,” but is “so culturally Jewish.”
“I don’t know if there’s a God. I’m a classic agnostic, but I’m a Jewish agnostic,” he shared. “That is, ‘Maybe there’s something! Don’t count it out!’”
Shawn called the funeral service “beautiful.”
“Death is maybe the great equalizer, I think,” she told ET. “You know, when you experience it with people who we really, really love, all the other noise and the nonsense that could be surrounding, it just goes away and the family goes close together. And that’s what happened. You know, it was beautiful.”
Shawn who survived Larry King is the seventh wife. The pair have two sons: Chance King, 21, and Cannon King, 20.
