Larry King, an American television and radio host who was born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger and died on January 23, 2021, was the recipient of 10 Cable ACE Awards, 2 Peabody Awards, and an Emmy. He moderated more than 50,000 interviews over his tenure.
Jewish parents who came to the United States from Belarus in the 1930s brought up King in New York City. He attended Brooklyn’s Lafayette High School, a public high school. In the 1950s and 1960s, he worked as a radio interviewer for WMBM in the Miami area. He rose to fame in 1978 as the host of The Larry King Show, a 24-hour call-in radio program broadcast on the Mutual Broadcasting System.
Larry King Early Life
King was born on November 19, 1933, in Brooklyn. He was one of two children born to Aaron Zeiger, a restaurant owner and defense plant employee, and Jennie (née Gitlitz), a textile worker from Minsk, Russian Empire. In the 1930s, his parents left Belarus and came to live in the United States as Orthodox Jews. King studied at Brooklyn’s Lafayette High School, a public high school.
King’s father passed away from a heart attack when he was nine years old.
King, his mother, and his brother ended up receiving government assistance as a result. King was deeply affected by his father’s passing and became disinterested in his education as a result.
Larry King Illness and Death
Prior to undergoing a successful quintuple-bypass procedure on February 24, 1987, King suffered a serious heart attack. He published two books about dealing with a heart condition. His lung had a malignant growth, which was found by doctors during his test in 2017. Surgery was then used to successfully remove it. King had stents implanted along with a routine angioplasty in April 2019.
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On January 23, 2021, Larry King, 87, passed away from sepsis brought on by the COVID-19 infection, for which he had been given a diagnosis 10 days before. His handwritten will, which was drafted in 2019 and bequeathed his estate (worth $2 million) to his five surviving children, is being challenged by his widow Shawn Southwick-King. Shawn claims that her stepson improperly influenced her father as he neared death.
Larry King Career
Larry King was hired by a radio station in Miami to clean up and perform odd jobs. His first broadcast was on May 1, 1957, working as the disc jockey from 9 a.m. to noon. He acquired the name Larry King when the station’s general manager claimed that Zeiger was too difficult to remember. During the 1960s, King hosted Miami Undercover on local television and radio.
He was also a color commentator for the Miami Dolphins during most of the 1970s. In 1971, he was dismissed by WIOD and WTVJ after being accused of grand larceny.
King started airing a nightly coast-to-coast program on the Mutual Broadcasting System on January 30, 1978. Some of King’s frequent callers employed aliases or had nicknames given to them by King. The program was shifted to the afternoons during its final season. For nearly 20 years, Larry King wrote a newspaper column for USA Today and conducted more than 30,000 interviews. His show Larry King Live became the longest-running television show hosted by the same person. After recording 6,000 episodes of the show, he retired in 2010.
Larry King Charitable Works
After suffering a heart attack in 1987, King established the Larry King Cardiac Foundation, a charitable organization that provided funding for life-saving cardiac operations for those who otherwise could not afford them.
King presided over Chabad’s 30th annual “To Life” telethon in Los Angeles on August 30, 2010.
His name is on a monument in the Beverly Hills 9/11 Memorial Garden where he made a donation.
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Larry King Personal Life
Larry King wed seven different ladies eight times. In 1962, he took in Andy, the son of Playboy Bunny Alene Akins; the following year, the pair were divorced. On October 7, 1989, Julie Alexander and King were wed in Washington, D.C., making Julie Alexander King’s sixth wife.
They divorced in 1992 after their separation and then got back together in 1999. Since 1997, Larry King has been wed to Shawn Southwick, a singer, actor, and TV host. When King passed away in 2021, they were estranged and going through a divorce.
King has five children, nine grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren from his seven wives. In August 2020, two of his children with Alene, Andy, and Chaia, passed away following heart attacks and lung cancer respectively.
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