LARRY King is going public with the news that he has a son — Larry King Jr., no less — he didn’t acknowledge for 33 years.
The son — from a brief, previous marriage to Annette Kaye — appeared for the first time with King on “Larry King Live” this week.
“I knew there was a Larry King Jr. out there, I’d heard that, but I didn’t know he was mine. 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 Post yesterday. “Then I never heard again.”
Larry Jr. was born in November 1961.
Why had he never sought out the son? “My life was in a swirl then. I had other children,” he explained, alluding to son Andy and daughter Chaia. “I know there was a doubt in my mind that I had a son.”
King, who’s publicizing his new memoir, “Larry King: My Remarkable Journey,” says he met Larry Jr. 15 years ago, after Annette, who was dying of lung cancer, called and assured him that the young man was indeed his son.
“I didn’t think about it,” he said. “I never heard from him, never heard from his mother. Never heard.
“I sort of put it away until that day [Annette] called,” he said.
Did King feel guilty over not telling anyone about Larry Jr.’s existence all those years?
“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 yesterday.
“I couldn’t call it guilt . . . I don’t know what it is. Maybe a wonderment — but not guilt.”
On the show, he says he told some family and friends about finding Larry Jr. but never publicly acknowledged him before the book was published.
Larry Jr. is married, with three children of his own. He works now as the head of King’s heart disease foundation in California.
King, who’s been married eight times to seven women, also got caught yesterday in a factual discrepancy in his book about winning $8,000 on a horse when he was down on his luck.
He claimed the horse was named Lady Forli and that he saved himself from financial disaster with a timely winning bet at Calder racetrack in 1971.
Turns out Lady Forli wasn’t foaled until 1972.
Blame it on memory, King says.
“I think 1971-72 was right, but the essence of the story, of course, is totally correct,” he said.
“But you can miss a year.”