Katie Couric Recalls Cringeworthy Date With 'Aging Horn Dog' Larry King In Explosive Memoir 'Going There'
Awkward!
In her new memoir, Going There, Katie Couric recalls her cringeworthy dinner date with the late CNN legend Larry King when she was in her 20s.
“I knew I had to put myself out there,” the former Today host wrote. “That meant saying yes to everyone, even men I was certain would never be the father of my children. In other words, even Larry King.”
The 64-year-old news personality detailed she met King while at an event at Duke Zeibert's. “I spotted the CNN host, in his trademark aviators and suspenders, moseying over, which might have had something to do with the chocolate-brown leather skirt I was wearing,” she recalled. “We chatted, and at some point, he said, ‘Can I take you out to dinner?’ ‘Sure,’ I said. Why not? Larry was already a big player on and off screen, with a slew of ex-wives. A pretty fascinating character. I was eager to pick his brain.”
The Shark Tale actress explained the Larry King Live host picked her up at her apartment and the two grabbed some grub at an Italian spot in Manhattan. Midway through the dinner Couric realized King — who was 24 years her senior — wasn’t for her.
“He ordered veal poached in chicken broth and ate it with gusto,” she explained. “Nothing gets a single gal’s juices flowing quite like a man slurping a heart-healthy dish and splattering it all over the napkin tucked into his collar!”
After dinner is when things took an awkward turn after Couric noticed the two were heading in the “opposite direction” of her place and were actually heading to King’s apartment, which set off alarm bells in the former talk show host’s head.
“Mayday! Mayday! Dear Cosmo: My dinner date is an aging horn dog and he’s detouring me to his place,” she wrote. “How do I extricate myself, stat?” Once inside, King invited Couric to sit on his couch, and that’s when he made his move. “I was trying to figure out an exit strategy when suddenly — boom! The lunge. The tongue. The hands. The whole scene was such a cliché, I began to laugh and gently pushed him away,” she reminisced, before shutting him down.
“‘Larry, you are so nice, and I enjoyed getting to know you,’ I said, ‘But I’m really interested in meeting someone a little closer to my age,'” Couric recalled, noting King got the hint and immediately “stopped what he was doing” and drove her home.
King tragically passed away at 87 on Saturday, January 23, at Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
