Going His Way

Larry King's entire life is one big production.

When his seventh wife, Shawn, was pregnant with their sons — Chance, 16, and Cannon, 15 — King insisted on both occasions that her labor be induced.

With their first son about to enter the world and Greta Van Susteren substituting as host of Larry King Live, about 20 friends, family, assistants — even coworkers from CNN — had gathered in the delivery room. They'd been there since early morning, but as the clock approached his show's 6 p.m. start time, "all of a sudden, I feel Larry's energy going up," Shawn says.

"He's trying to get the doctor, and he's saying, 'We've got to get this baby born! He's gotta come out.' He's screaming at the doctor because he wanted the baby born during that six o'clock hour so that it could be announced on his freaking show," she says. "He's going, 'Push!' and I'm going, 'Okay.' At 6:32 Pacific Standard Time, Chance King entered the world, and Greta announced it at 6:36."

Moments later, "I got the phone shoved in my ear, and it's Nancy Reagan," she adds. "Larry wanted to be sure we told Nancy... Larry wants so much to share those moments.

Is it any wonder that such a man could not stand to hang it up?

King, who turned 82 in November, tried to retire when CNN canceled Larry King Live in 2010 after 25 years in the same timeslot.

"I was 78, and I thought I could," he says. "For two months, I had retired."

But that all changed the night that CNN was slated to air the first of several specials King had agreed to host for the network after his show went off the air. He was hosting a little viewing party at his home, but before the special could air on the West Coast, CNN broke in: Osama Bin Laden had been shot and killed.

"I was watching television, and my first instinct was to get up and go to the car to go down to work," he says. "But I had nowhere to go. And I realized, I needed somewhere to go."

His wife, who is 26 years younger, puts it bluntly: "I couldn't stand to see Larry going crazy, and I also couldn't stand to see him in my house all day long."

Larry King was ready for his next act. And that next act, after decades on radio and television, was the internet.

In 2012, King partnered with Mexican magnate Carlos Slim Helu to launch a digital network and production company named Ora, which is Shawn's middle name and Italian for now.

Ora provided a platform for King to continue doing what he does best — interviewing celebrities, politicians and newsmakers — on Larry King Now and PoliticKING with Larry King, which can be found online at Ora TV, on Hulu and on the Russian state-funded RT network.

Shawn and Larry King, whose 19-year marriage nearly ended in 2010 after Larry admittedly flirted with his wife's sister, have become partners in business as well.

In 2014, they launched a podcast, Back and Forth with Shawn and Larry King, which has echoes of Burns and Allen and The Honeymooners. The two also plan to launch a line of linens early next year, tentatively named Sleep Like a King. And in October they started cohosting an Ora-produced show, Collector's Cafe.

But King hasn't stopped there. Until recently, he hosted a show about the Los Angeles Dodgers for Time Warner Cable's SportsNet LA, and every Sunday night he dictates tweets under the hashtag #itsmy2cents, which his wife posts for his 2.6 million Twitter followers,

Despite surviving a heart attack, bypass surgery, prostate cancer, Type 2 diabetes and eight marriages (to seven women), King shows few signs of slowing down.

"I can't believe I'm 82,” King says. "My father was 46 when he died of a heart attack, so I always thought I'd die at 46. The only signs I see of it, I have occasional... well, everyone at 82 has little memory things. What did I eat yesterday? But I remember things from 46 years ago exact."

In fact, King has been on the air so long and interviewed so many guests — roughly 60,000, including sitting presidents, world leaders and movie stars — that he's like a living encyclopedia of pop culture and politics. Still, he looks to the future. "If I make it to 2017 on the air, I will have been on the air 60 years," he says. "I've had an enormously full life."

That life began in 1933 Brooklyn, where he was born Lawrence Zeiger to Jewish immigrant parents. His father died when he was nine, forcing his family onto welfare. "I was very poor," he says. "New York supported us for two years. New York City bought my first pair of glasses. The inspector would come to look at what kind of foods we were eating. So I knew what it was like to be on relief. I never forgot that."

King could not attend college because, as soon as he was old enough, he went to work to support his family, taking jobs at UPS, delivering tuxedoes and selling home-delivered milk. But he never forgot his childhood dream of being on the radio, so when his younger brother was old enough to help, King headed to Miami and landed his first radio job at a small station.

"I was scared to death," he recalls. "I couldn't go to sleep all weekend. I was a disc jockey and did news and sports. The general manager called me in right before I went on and said, 'What name are you going to use?' I said, 'What's wrong with Zeiger?' He said, 'It's too ethnic' He had the paper, the Miami Herald, open to King's wholesale liquors. So I became Larry King."

Over the course of his broadcast career, King has rarely been at a loss for words. But that first day on the job, he was too nervous to speak. His first five minutes on the air, King kept fading the music and bringing it up, "and nothing was coming out of my mouth," he says. "I really thought I didn't have the guts. I was too scared and had blown it."

The general manager kicked open the door to the control room and told him, "This is a communications business, dammit. Communicate!"

So King turned up the mic and laid himself bare. "I said, 'Good morning. My name is Larry King. That is the first time I've ever said that because I've just been given that name. All my life I wanted to be on the air. This is my first day on the air, and I'm scared.' And I said to the audience, 'This is what I've always wanted, and I'm now afraid to do it. So I'm going to do the best I can.'" That honesty gave him instant appeal.

"The reason that worked so well — I didn't realize it at the time — but [broadcaster] Arthur Godfrey later told me, 'What you did was bring the audience into your dilemma. So that any mistake you made, they would understand: it's his first day.' I was never nervous again — never, ever. I couldn't wait to get on the air. Every minute."

King soon started broadcasting from Pumpernik's restaurant, conducting impromptu interviews with anyone who walked in, including personalities such as Bobby Darin, Jimmy Hoffa, Danny Thomas and Ed Sullivan. King landed a local TV show a year later.

Actor Jackie Gleason became a regular guest and mentor, putting him in touch with Frank Sinatra, who not only became a repeat guest but also a friend. (King eventually aired Sinatra's last TV interview on CNN before he died.)

Things were not all rosy, though. His personal life was often in turmoil, as were his finances. "I got in jams with women," King admits. "I never handled money well. I owed money. I was bankrupt once. I had too much too soon. Instead of driving a Ford, I would drive a Cadillac."

In 1971, King was arrested for grand larceny and ended up pleading no contest to one count of passing a bad check. He lost his job. "That all came to roost," he said. "I paid some prices for it, but I learned from that."

By 1978, King had bounced back, landing a national nightly radio talk show on the Mutual Broadcasting System. "I could have been national [earlier] if I'd handled things better," he says. "Because I never got in trouble on the air. Ever. Ever. In retrospect, if I'm a psychologist, more than money, more than women, my career mattered."

And his career was going gangbusters. Joining CNN in 1985, just five years after Ted Turner launched the upstart 24-hour cable news network, King had a punishing work schedule. At one point, fans could watch Larry King Live on CNN from 9 to 10 p.m., then listen to him on the radio (on his national talk show) from midnight to 5 a.m. and read his weekly column in USA Today.

Over the course of his 25 years at CNN, King became known for his ability to talk to anyone, anywhere. "He's Forrest Gump," says Shawn King. "It's not just entertainment. It's not just politics. It's not just sports, and it's not just hatchet murderers. It's everybody."

In 1992, Ross Perot broke the news on King's show that he would run for president as a third-party candidate. Perot had denied plans to run, but King pressed him repeatedly, asking if there were any circumstances that would make him run.

"And he said, 'If I could be on the ballot in 50 states, I would run,'" King recalls. "When we got off the air, he said to me, 'You don't think anything is going to happen with this? 'And I said,'I don't think so.' And then he told me the next day, 'You know, I got back to the hotel and the bellman gave me 10 dollars for my campaign.'"

After Bill Clinton won that election, Perot spearheaded a campaign against his North American Free Trade Agreement, and King made history again. "Al Gore called me up and said, 'Can I come on your show and debate Perot?' I said, 'I don't think it's ever been done, a sitting vice-president debating an ordinary citizen.'"

More than 16 million viewers tuned in, and NAFTA subsequently passed "That debate changed that vote," King said. "Gore clearly won that debate. Clinton called me up the next day and said, 'I owe you big time.'"

Today King keeps a picture of Clinton holding hands with his young sons Chance and Cannon on a table in the circular foyer of his Beverly Hills home.

Nevertheless, as the cable news landscape changed and King approached his 80s, his ratings began to dwindle. In June 2010, New York Times media critic David Carr wrote a piece titled, "Larry King's Endgame at CNN," calling him "a bit of a cartoon" and asking the network to name a successor. One week later, the network announced that King's show would end later that year,

King, however, got the last laugh. His successor, Piers Morgan, lasted only three years, and CNN has yet to find a permanent replacement. Meanwhile, as King continues to do his thing on Ora, Hulu and RT, Carr died of cancer in February.

"Karma," says Shawn King. "Who got canceled first?"

"God got him," jokes King (who is actually an avowed atheist). "I tell you, we Jews are strong. One call I made. No, I'm only kidding."

And while the New York Times recently ran a magazine feature titled "Larry King Is Preparing for the Final Cancellation," focusing on King's obsession with death and his desire to be cryogenically preserved, Shawn says this: "Larry is not going anywhere anytime soon — unless I kill him."

These days, King tapes his shows rather than airing them live, giving him more time to travel.

On this particular day at his studio in Glendale, California — located in a former church building whose stained-glass window lights the green room — King had just flown back from Israel and was about to leave for a board meeting in Mexico, followed by a trip to Italy with his wife.

He would then head to New York to present the Lifetime Achievement Emmy of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to Ted Turner (King received the award in 2010).

"Ted was the best person I ever worked for," King says. "More marriages should run 25 years like that. They were always sweet to me. It became more corporate at the end — it was so big. Time Warner is a mammoth. Private planes the last 12 years. Made a lot of money."

Working at a digital startup doesn't come with quite the same perks, but, "I still fly first-class," King says. "I took a cut in income, but my lifestyle hasn't changed. I have a beautiful home. I got no regrets. None."

The guests for his Ora shows are not always the typical A-listers making the rounds. While he has featured the Dalai Lama and Oprah Winfrey, he also frequently hosts rappers and even heavy-metal musicians, making for quite a contrast.

"Rappers love me," King says. "I don't know why. I've always liked young people, and I think they know I am not closed to ideas."

Right after the launch of Ora TV, CEO Jon Housman took King to the headquarters of Twitter, where he held court telling stories and answering questions from employees.

"Larry looked at the crowd and said, 'Raise your hand if you're over 40 years old,'" Housman says. "Not one hand went up. Then he says, 'Raise your hand if you're over 30,’ and maybe two hands came up. Now I'm thinking this might be a tougher audience for Larry. These are 20-somethings working in a hip social-media company. These are people who might not know his references or have watched him for decades on CNN."

Instead, "to use stand-up comedy parlance, he killed the room," Housman continues. "People were rolling off their chairs in laughter. Larry was telling stories about U.S. presidents and Middle East leaders, and people were hanging on his every word."

Undoubtedly King misses being in the middle of a big story these days, but "everything today is breaking news," he says. "That I don't miss... I couldn't say, 'Breaking news: the sun came up this morning.'"

Nevertheless, he reads five papers a day and likes to stay in the mix. Donald Trump recently gave him a call.

"I've interviewed him many times," King says. "You know, he's Donald Trump. He is a caricature of himself. I mean, he's classic, 'Enough about me, let's talk about you. What do you think of me?' You take I out of the English language and Trump is ruined."

King has been close to Hillary Clinton for a long time, too, but she hasn't sat down with him on Ora TV yet. "It's harder because it's the internet," he acknowledges, "but it's growing. I imagine by the time the race starts, we'll get everybody on."

Ora TV does not release detailed ratings for King's shows, but the company says the site has 30 million monthly visitors and King is the biggest draw. Larry King Now was nominated for a 2014 News Emmy in the category of Outstanding News Discussion and Analysis (for a program that focused on head trauma in the National Football League), alongside traditional TV news programs such as PBS NewsHour.

So are there any goals that King — who has written 15 books, appeared in 22 movies and even starred in a stand-up comedy tour — has yet to accomplish?

You bet. Life's a show, and the suspendered broadcaster with a distinctly vaudevillian sense of humor has yet to hold court on New York's main stage. "If I have the stamina, I would like to do a month of "An Evening with Larry King" on Broadway, where I can do my comedy shtick and take questions from the audience. I'd love to do that."