The new edition of the National Enquirer—hitting newsstands today—claims that Larry King has been cuckolded by an un-named personal impact guru, who has been having a year-long affair with the 82-year-old’s wife, Shawn, 57.
The alleged “Hollywood Don Juan” was swiftly named by the New York Post’s Page Six column as presentation coach Richard Greene, whose clients have included Princess Diana and Will Smith.
Although a friend of Larry’s told Page Six, “He’s heartbroken,” it might be worth recalling the octogenarian’s amazing and polyamorous romantic history before calling a pity party on his behalf.
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King’s sex life has certainly kept the ink-stained wretches of the Enquirer and other publications busy over the years.
Straight out of the blocks, it should be noted that the legendary host and anchor man has been married eight times to seven different women (he married one of his wives, Playboy model Alene Akins, twice—in 1961, as third wife, and in 1968, as his fifth wife) and has been engaged on several other occasions without actually making it up the aisle.
And you don’t get through that many marriages and betrothals without a certain amount of romantic controversy.
Larry's first marriage was to his high school sweetheart, Freda Miller. The couple wed in 1952 when Larry was just 19. The union was allegedly annulled the next year by their parents.
Undeterred by this upset, Larry then wed Annette Kay in 1961. They were divorced the same year. In November ’61, after they had separated, she gave birth to his son, but Larry did not acknowledge the child until the mid-’90s, when Annette, dying of lung cancer, contacted him to tell him the boy was his.
It subsequently appeared that King sorta knew about the boy: “The marriage was very short and she told me if it’s a boy, I’m gonna name him Larry King Jr.,” King, 75, told The New York Post, “Then I never heard again.” “In retrospect, I should’ve said to people, ‘You know, there’s a chance there’s a guy out there with my name who’s my son,’” he said.
The third Mrs King was the aforementioned Playboy model Akins, followed by Mickey Sutphin (married 1964, divorced 1967) who is the mother of King’s daughter Kelly. Akins makes an encore appearance as wife five, followed by #6, Sharon Lepore, whom he wed in 1976. They stayed together till 1983.
His seventh wife was a businesswoman named Julie Alexander.
Larry demonstrated the continuing triumph of hope over experience by proposing after the pair’s first date on Aug. 1, 1989.
Marry in haste, repent at leisure, as they say; and things didn’t end well on this occasion. They split in 1992 and Larry then sued Julia for slander after alleging Julia had broken a legal agreement prohibiting her from talking about their marriage publicly.
Larry and his eighth and current wife, Shawn, were married on Sept. 5, 1997 in a Los Angeles hospital room. The ceremony took place just three days before the groom underwent heart surgery to clear a clogged blood vessel.
The relationship has not been plain sailing, even before these latest allegations, with accusations of past infidelity on both sides.
The last major blow-up was in 2010, when Larry was accused of cheating on Shawn with her younger sister, Shannon Engemann.
The Enquirer claimed Larry’s entanglement was revenge for Shawn’s alleged affair with her son's baseball coach in 2008—a claim she denied.
Shannon denied her sister’s allegation of an affair: “This is so ludicrous,” Engemann told TMZ, “She's singling me out, but Larry has been nothing but generous to our entire family, including me.”
Shawn and Larry got as far as filing for divorce, however, after an alleged attempted suicide on her part, the two reconciled and dismissed the divorce petitions.
“We love our children, we love each other, we love being a family. That is all that matters to us,” the couple said in a joint statement. “We owe it to ourselves and our children to continue being dedicated to each other.”
It now appears that the relationship is in peril again.
Greene allegedly met Shawn when he was a guest on a podcast she co-hosts with her husband, “Back and Forth With Shawn and Larry.”
The National Enquirer claims that Shawn sent Greene nude pictures and is trying to groom him as “the next Larry King.”
The Enquirer claims that Shawn, 56, and her lover briefly split and that she begged him to “delete our private photos and video” but that they have now reunited, and that, “even as the Enquirer prepared to go to print, former TV and movie actress Shawn was trying to desperately arrange a passionate hookup with her lover via Facebook sex messages.”
In one text conversation, Greene allegedly told Shawn: “You do have great ankles, legs, eyes, brain, breasts, mouth, vagina etc. etc.”
The New York Post reported that attorneys representing Shawn and Larry, and a representative for Greene, called the story of the affair “inaccurate.”
