Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Larry King is hospitalized with COVID

(JTA) — Larry King, the celebrity radio and TV host who is the son of Orthodox Jewish immigrants, has been hospitalized with COVID for over a week.

Roger Friedman’s Showbiz 411 site first reported the news Friday, and CNN confirmed it on Saturday through talking with an unnamed source close to King’s family.

Showbiz 411 published an update on Sunday saying the 87-year-old King is rumored to have a “50/50 or better” chance at surviving the virus.

King, best known for his decades hosting radio talk shows and for hosting “Larry King Live” on CNN for 25 years, has survived multiple heart attacks, angina and lung cancer. His three sons and other family members have not been able to visit him at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

King lost two of his adult children in 2020, one to a heart attack and another to lung cancer.

He was born Lawrence Zeiger and raised in a Jewish family in Brooklyn.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.