Earlier this week, we reported that the television legend Larry King had passed away at the age of 87. Now, his widow Shawn King is speaking out to reveal what his emotional final words to her were.

King had been hospitalized earlier this month with COVID-19, and he died there this passed weekend. While Shawn could not be with him in person due to the pandemic, she was able to FaceTime with him before he passed away.

“We were able to do FaceTime in the hospital and it was hard for him to talk, but the one message that he wanted to make sure I heard was, ‘I love you, take care of the boys,'” Shawn recalled to Entertainment Tonight.

Though previous reports stated that King died of the coronavirus, Shawn clarified that while he was hospitalized after testing positive, this was not actually what killed him.

“It was an infection, it was sepsis,” she explained. “Well, he was finally ready to go, I will tell you that. You know, he never wanted to go but his sweet little body was just, it had just been hit so many times with so many things and once we heard the word COVID, all of our hearts just sunk. But he beat it, you know, he beat it, but it did take its toll and then the unrelated infection finally is what took him, but boy, he was not gonna go down easily.”

Shawn, 61, went on to talk about how difficult it was to watch King struggle with his health in his final years.

“His mind wasn’t right, and his body was going, and so that was hard to witness because Larry as we know him is the guy that goes, ‘Come on, let’s go, you’re late, get out of here,'” she said. “It’s always, ‘You’re late.”

Shawn and King got married in 1997, and though they both filed for divorce in 2010, they went on to reconcile and it never became official. King filed for divorce again in August of 2019, but they were still technically married at the time of his death.

“Larry and I, you know, we never finalized our divorce,” Shawn pointed out. “In my heart, I didn’t think it was really going to happen and it never did. We were partners in every sense of the way, in business, and in, well, first in our family and then in business. But we’re a close family. You know, family is the most important thing, and God.”

In the end, Shawn feels that King is not really gone.

“I believe he’s still around us and I can feel him,” Shawn said. “I can very, very distinctly feel him around me and around us. I’m sure he is so happy at the coverage that his passing has gotten. … Larry was a little boy in so many ways. And he used to always, you probably have 30 different soundbites of him saying, ‘I pinch myself every day. I can’t believe this is my life.’ And he really, really did. So all of these beautiful tributes, you know, I’m sure he’s thrilled, and the family, we’re all just so happy and so proud of him for all the wonderful things that he did. He did a lot.”