Larry King’s widow, Shawn King, confirmed the legendary broadcaster was hospitalized with the coronavirus, but said he had “beat it” and it wasn’t the cause of his death.
“It was an infection, it was sepsis,” the wife of the late TV host told Entertainment Tonight. The clip was noted by the “Today” show in a piece published Thursday.
“Well, he was finally ready to go, I will tell you that,” she added. “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.” (RELATED: Report: Larry King Moves Out Of ICU, Remains Hospitalized With Coronavirus)
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“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,” King continued. (RELATED: Larry King Breaks Silence Following ‘Loss Of Two Of My Children’)
At one point, the wife of the broadcast legend shared Larry’s final words to her before he died which came in a FaceTime message.
“I love you, take care of the boys,” Shawn said. “I believe he’s still around us and I can feel him. I can very, very distinctly feel him around me and around us. 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,” she added. “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.”
As previously reported, King’s widow and their two sons, Chance and Cannon, held a private funeral for him earlier this week where she revealed they all wore Larry’s suspenders.
“We all, it was just family, we wore Larry’s suspenders, every one of us,” Shawn shared. “And it was a beautiful, loving … just perfect, just perfect. It was family. There was no showbiz, no, none of that.”
Shawn and Larry tied the knot in 1997 and both filed for divorce in 2010. However, the couple never went through with it. In 2019, the late broadcaster filed for divorce again, but Shawn shared with the outlet the divorce was never finalized.
The broadcaster died on Jan. 23 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 87.