Larry King, who died Saturday at the age of 87, was known almost as much for his multiple marriages and divorces as for being a transmission icon. He married eight different women eight times. The first time I was only 18 years old. One was a math teacher, another was a Playboy bunny. He once said he never cheated on any of them, even though some of his exes disagreed, and at least one stepped on him several times.
“I got married a lot,” he once said. “But in my head, I’m not a married man. 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 in 1997; separated in 2019)
King’s longest marriage was also the last, and the only one that lasted. Although King filed for divorce from Southwick, 61, in 2019, it appears they were still married at the time of King’s death. They have two children, Chance, 21, and Cannon, 20.
The two married in a hospital room in 1997 just before being operated on to clean a blocked blood vessel. Southwick, a veterinarian of a business program with experience performing and singing on television shows in the 1970s and 1980s, was the daughter of a longtime music manager.
Although the marriage was rocky, due in part to her 26-year age difference and Southwick’s rumored infidelity (including a complaint to her son’s baseball coach), Southwick seemed devastated when he learned that King had filed for divorce. “I was crushed, I had no idea that this would happen, it hurt me. I was totally blind. ”
Julie Alexander
(married in 1989; divorced in 1992)
King met businesswoman Julie Alexander and fell head over heels. He married her later that year in Washington, DC. But it ended almost as fast as it began. They separated in 1990 and divorced two years later. Alexander told “Inside Edition” in 2010 that he suspected King had cheated on him.
Sharon Lepore
(married in 1976; divorced in 1983)
Lepore, a former math teacher and television production assistant, was one of King’s lower-profile women. It was King’s second longest marriage, but also the most private. The two were mothers because they divorced.
Mickey Sutphin
(married in 1963; divorced in 1967)
The two met when they worked at a radio station in Miami and had a daughter, Kelly, who was apparently adopted by Sutphin’s second husband.
Alene Akins
(married in 1961; divorced in 1963. He remarried in 1967; divorced in 1972)
Former Playboy Bunny, Akins married King twice, with his marriage to Mickey Sutphin in the middle. They had a daughter, Chaia, and King adopted their son, Andy. Akins died in 2017 and King called her a “great lady” in a tweet. Both Chaia, 51, and Andy, 65, died in 2020. Chaia died of lung cancer and Andy from a heart attack.
Annette Kaye
(married in 1961; divorced in 1961)
Their marriage lasted only a year, but produced a son, Larry Jr., who is now 59 years old. Larry King Jr. he was about thirty years old when he met his father. Kaye talked about King about her shared son in 1994, when he was dying of lung cancer.
Freda Miller
(married 1952; annulled 1953)
King married his high school friend Freda Miller when she was just 18 years old. The marriage was annulled, apparently at the request of her parents because they did not approve of the union.