LOS ANGELES, CA – JULY 23: Talk show host Larry King attends the 68th Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards at Television Academy on July 23, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)
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Larry King, the legendary American broadcaster who was a fixture of cable news for decades, has died. He was 87.
King passed away Saturday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to Ora Media, the company King founded after leaving CNN. No information was immediately available about his cause of death.
King was host of a CNN talk show that became one of the network’s most-watched and longest-running programs.
King was hospitalized for the coronavirus in December. He also had confronted many medical issues, including Type 2 diabetes, heart attacks, quintuple bypass surgery and lung cancer.
His medical issues inspired him to start the Larry King Cardiac Foundation in 1988. The nonprofit aims to help those without health insurance afford medical care.
King began his broadcast journalism career in Florida in the 1950s and gained prominence in the late ’70s as host of “The Larry King Show,” an all-night nationwide call-in radio program.
CNN launched the “Larry King Live” television talk show in 1985, and it ran until 2010.
His awards included two Peabodys, an Emmy and 10 Cable ACE Awards.
For the most part King, conducted his interviews from the studio and wearing his signature suspenders. He was known for asking easy, open-ended questions to guests, making him an attractive interviewer to important figures in politics and Hollywood.
In 2012, King co-founded a production company called Ora TV with Mexican media magnate Carlos Slim. Through that company, King hosted the webs series “Larry King Now” which was made available on the streaming service Hulu.
King was married eight times to seven women and fathered five children. His children with then-wife Alene Akins, Andy and Chaia King, died within weeks of each other in the summer of 2020. Andy, 65, died unexpectedly of a heart attack in July, and Chaia, 51, died in August after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Akins, a former Playboy bunny, died in 2017.
King had three other sons: Larry Jr. from his brief marriage to Annette Kaye and sons Chance and Cannon from his marriage to Shawn Southwick. King filed for divorce from Southwick in 2019.