Larry King Did Not Die From COVID-19, Wife Says

 

By Zoe Papadakis

Larry King did not die from COVID-19, his wife Shawn King has revealed. The TV icon was hospitalized with coronavirus shortly before he passed away on Jan. 23 at age 87 but in an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Shawn explained that he died from unrelated causes.

"It was an infection, it was sepsis," she said. "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 March 2019, Larry suffered from a "slight stroke," which left him struggling to walk on his left foot. He later told Page Six he thought he was going to die.

"They thought I was going to die in March," King told the outlet at the time. "They told my two boys to come home. It was really touch-and-go.

Shawn and Larry shared two sons, Chance, 21, and Cannon, 20. They were on his mind when he passed away, Shawn told ET.

"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 recalled.

Shawn and Larry had a rocky marriage. They both filed for divorce in 2010, after 13 years of marriage, but decided not to go through with it. Then, in 2019, Larry once again filed for divorce. Despite the ups and downs, they still loved one another.

"In my heart, I didn't think it was really going to happen and it never did," Shawn said of the filing. "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."