Shawn King shared a special moment with her late husband, Larry King, before his death on Saturday at 87 years old. Shawn spoke to ET this week, and she revealed their final exchange.
Shawn said her final words to Larry were “I love you,” and noted that the television icon kept his family on his mind until his last moments. Shawn shared two sons with Larry — 21-year-old Chance and 20-year-old Cannon — and he’s also survived by his eldest son, 59-year-old Larry King, Jr., from his marriage to Annette Kaye.
“We were able to do FaceTime in the hospital and 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 says.
Earlier this month, Larry was hospitalized with COVID-19. But Shawn told ET that he didn’t die from the coronavirus.
“It was an infection, it was sepsis,” she says. “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.”
Shawn talked about the difficulty of watching Larry struggle with health complications in his later years.
“His mind wasn’t right, and his body was going, and so that was hard to witness because Larry as we know him is the guy that goes, ‘Come on, let’s go, you’re late, get out of here,'” she recalls. “It’s always, ‘You’re late.”
Shawn said Larry’s death has brought his family closer together. And although she and Larry had their ups and downs in their marriage, they remained close until the very end. Shawn and Larry got married in 1997, and they both filed for divorce in April 2010, though they didn’t go through with it. In August 2019, Larry again filed for divorce.
“Larry and I, you know, we never finalized our divorce,” she notes. “In my heart, I didn’t think it was really going to happen and it never did. We were partners in every sense of the way, in business, and in, well, first in our family and then in business. But we’re a close family. You know, family is the most important thing, and God.”
Despite all his incredible career accomplishments, Shawn said Larry’s proudest legacy is his family. Larry was a father of five, although last August, his son, Andy King, died, and his daughter, Chaia, died from lung cancer just one week after. Andy was 65 and Chaia was 51.
“I believe he’s still around us and I can feel him,” Shawn tells ET. “I can very, very distinctly feel him around me and around us. I’m sure he is so happy at the coverage that his passing has gotten. … Larry was a little boy in so many ways. And he used to always, you probably have 30 different soundbites of him saying, ‘I pinch myself every day. I can’t believe this is my life.’ And he really, really did. So all of these beautiful tributes, you know, I’m sure he’s thrilled, and the family, we’re all just so happy and so proud of him for all the wonderful things that he did. He did a lot.”
She also talked about how proud Larry was of their sons. By the time he had his two youngest children, he was at a place in his career where he was able to spend more time with his children.
“You know, he was there for their births, he cut the cord for both of them,” she shares. “So, he got to go through all those stages with Chance and Cannon, and I’m sure he missed being able to be with the older kids, but I think we took pride in, you know, kind of getting the kid thing right.”
