Larry King, who died on Saturday at the age of 87, was known almost as much for his multiple marriages and divorces as for being a broadcast icon. He was married eight times to seven different women. He was only 18 at the first time. One was a math teacher, the other a Playboy bunny. He once said he never cheated on anyone, although some of his exes disagreed – and at least one failed him a few times.
“I got married a lot,” he once said. “But in my head, I’m not a married guy. When I was growing up, no one lived together. If you fell in love, you got married. And so I married the ones I loved. But what I loved at 20 is not what I loved at 30, and what I loved at 30 is not what I loved at 40. ”
Shawn Southwick
(married 1997; separated 2019)
King’s longest marriage was also his last – and the only one that lasted. Although King filed for divorce from Southwick, aged 61, in 2019, it appears that they were still married on King’s death. They have two sons, Chance, 21, and Cannon, 20.
The two married in a hospital room in 1997, just before undergoing surgery to clear a blocked blood vessel. Southwick, a show veterinarian with acting experience and singing on TV shows in the 1970s and 1980s, was the daughter of a longtime music manager.
Although the marriage was rocky, due in part to their 26-year age difference and Southwick’s alleged infidelity (including a denigration reported to her son’s baseball coach), Southwick looked devastated when she learned that King had filed for divorce. “I was crushed, I had no idea that this was happening, it hurt, yes. I was completely blinded. ”
Julie Alexander
(married 1989; divorced 1992)
King met with businesswoman Julie Alexander and fell over. He married her later that year in Washington, DC, but it ended almost as quickly as it began. They separated in 1990 and divorced two years later. Alexander told “Inside Edition” in 2010 that he suspected that King had cheated on her.
Sharon Lepore
(married 1976; divorced 1983)
Lepore, a former math teacher and TV production assistant, was among King’s lowest-profile wives. It was King’s second longest marriage, but also the most intimate. They were both the mother of why they divorced.
Mickey Sutphin
(married in 1963; divorced in 1967)
The two allegedly met while working at a Miami radio station and had a daughter, Kelly, who apparently was adopted by Sutphin’s second husband.
Alene Akins
(married 1961; divorced 1963. remarried 1967; divorced 1972)
A former Playboy Bunny, Akins married King twice – with his marriage to Mickey Sutphin between them. They had a daughter, Chaia, and King adopted her son, Andy. Akins died in 2017, and King called her a “great lady” in a tweet. Both Chaia, then 51, and Andy, then 65, died in 2020. Chaia died of lung cancer and Andy of a heart attack.
Annette Kaye
(married 1961; divorced 1961)
Their marriage lasted only a year, but they produced a son, Larry Jr., 59 years ago. Larry King Jr. was 30 when he met his father. Kaye told King about the shared child in 1994, when he died of lung cancer.
Freda Miller
(married 1952; annulled 1953)
King married his high school sweetheart, Freda Miller, when he was just 18 years old. The marriage was annulled, apparently at the request of her parents, because they did not approve the union.