His son, Chance, confirmed King’s death Saturday morning.
King hosted “Larry King Live” on CNN for more than 25 years, interviewing presidential candidates, celebrities, athletes, movie stars and everyday people. He retired in 2010 after recording more than 6,000 episodes of the show.
A statement was posted on his verified Facebook announcing his transfer.
“With deep sadness, Ora Media announces the death of our co-founder, host and friend Larry King, who died this morning at the age of 87 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles,” the statement said. “For 63 years and across radio, television and digital media platforms, Larry’s thousands of interviews, awards and worldwide recognition are a testament to his unique and enduring talent as a broadcaster.”
The statement did not explain the cause of death.
“We regret the passing of our comrade Larry King,” CNN President Jeff Zucker said in a statement.
“The wacky young Brooklyn man had a historic career that embraced radio and television. His curiosity about the world drove his award-winning career in the field of broadcasting, but it was his generosity of spirit that attracted him. the world towards him.We are so proud of the 25 years he spent on CNN, where his interviews with journalists put the network on the international stage.From our CNN family to Larry, we send our thoughts and prayers and the promise to continue his curiosity about the world in our work. “
King battled several health problems, suffering several heart attacks. In 1987 he underwent quintuple bypass surgery, which inspired him to establish the Larry King Heart Foundation to provide assistance to those without insurance.
Most recently, King revealed in 2017 that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and that he was successfully operated on to treat it. In 2019 he also underwent a procedure to treat angina.
In an era full of star journalists, King was a giant, among the most prominent questions on television and host of presidents, movie stars and world-class athletes.
With affable, carefree demeanor that set him apart from the most intense TV interviewers, King perfected an informal approach to the Q&A format, always leaning forward and listening intently to his guests, rarely interrupting them.
“I’ve never learned anything,” King liked to say, “while I was talking.”
For 25 years, it hosted “Larry King Live” on CNN, a space highlighted by more than 30,000 interviews, including all of Gerald Ford’s presidents to Barack Obama and thousands of viewer phone calls.
The show made King one of the faces of the network and one of the most famous television journalists in the country. His column in USA Today, which ran for nearly 20 years until 2001, featured King’s distinctive print style, inviting readers to a trail of non-followers who served as a window to his mind.
“The most underused player in the NFL this year was Desmond Howard of Washington … Despite what you think of Lawrence Walsh, we will always need a special prosecutor because a government cannot investigate itself,” he wrote. King in a 1992 column.
Those reflections, combined with his unmistakable look (oversized glasses, ever-present straps) made King ripe for caricature. In the 1990s, she was played on “Saturday Night Live” by Norm MacDonald, who channeled the USA Today column with an impersonation.
Aside from the jokes, King’s influence is evident today in the generation of podcasters who have mimicked his conversational approach to interviews, whether deliberate or not.
“A good interview: you know more than you do before you start. You should change some of your opinions,” King told the Los Angeles Times in 2018. “You should definitely go out entertained: an interviewer is also an animator.” .
Born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger on November 19, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York, King was raised by two Jewish immigrants. His mother, Jennie (Gitlitz) Zeiger, was from Lithuania, while his father, Edward Zeiger, came from Ukraine. Edward died of a heart attack when King was ten, a memory King said he mostly “blocked.”
Stopped raising King and her younger brother Marty alone, Jennie Zeiger was forced to attend to her children. Death had a profound effect on King and his mother.
“Before I died, I had been a good student, but then I stopped being interested,” King told The Guardian in a 2015 interview. “It was a real blow to me. But I finally channeled that anger. because I wanted to make him and my mother proud. “
King said his father had a huge influence on him, instilling in his son a sense of humor and love for the sport. And no sport attracted King’s affection more than baseball.
He grew up a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and continued to support the team after moving to Los Angeles. It was one of the home team games at Dodger Stadium, which was often seen in the high-priced seats behind the home plate. In 2004, King wrote a book aptly titled “Why I Love Baseball.”
King’s career in the media began in earnest in 1957, when he worked as a DJ at the WAHR-AM in Miami. It was then that he made the decision to abandon his surname.
“You can’t use Larry Zeiger,” his station boss recalled saying. “It’s too ethnic. People won’t be able to write it down or remember it. You need a better name.”
“There was no time to think about whether this was good or bad or what my mother would say. I was going on the air in five minutes,” King wrote in his 2009 autobiography.
“The Miami Herald was lying on his desk. Face up was a full-page ad for King’s Wholesale Liquors. The general manager looked down and said, ‘King!’ How about Larry King? “”
It was around this time that King entered what would become a series of failed marriages. His marriage to Frada Miller was annulled and the dates of his second marriage to Annette Kaye are not publicly available.
From 1961 to 1963, King married Alene Akins, whom he remarried between 1967 and 71; before remarrying, King tied the knot with Mickey Sutphin in 1964 before divorcing in 1966.
CNN’s Ray Sanchez and David J. Lopez contributed to this report.