Larry King never went to college, and he barely graduated from high school. But King says that if it weren’t for his nationally acclaimed show, CNN’s “Larry King Live”, he would have gone back to school—law school, to be specific.

King, whose penchant for asking questions led him to his current career, says he could have also seen himself as a criminal defender, but never as a prosecutor.

“Criminal law is the most investigative kind of law—and I am the kind of guy who could argue to save a guy’s life, but never to send someone to jail—that runs against my grain. I would like to argue a case to a jury—there is something very similar about the two careers...you’re just trying to get someone to tell a story,” he says.

“I’ve always had a burning curiosity,” says King. “My mother would take me to the dentist, and I would ask him why he did his job, I would ask plumbers who came to the house about why they liked pipes, and when I went to baseball games, most kids wanted autographs, but all I wanted was to ask questions.” King says that he would trail after players when games ended, asking them why they bunted or why they stole a certain base.

“I am a why person,” he says. “And I am the kind of person that you don’t want to have sitting next to you on an airplane,” he quips.

“Of course, I am doing today exactly what I had always dreamed about doing, but had I not been a broadcaster, and had I gone into a different career, it would have been law,” he says.

While King says he has always admired broadcasters, he lists celebrity lawyer Edward Bennett Williams as one of his role models.

It seems fitting, therefore, that King, whose show is the first worldwide phone-in television talk show and CNN’s highest-rated program, will be speaking to some of the best of America’s future lawyers today. In his speech to HLS’s graduating class, King says he will focus on taking risks, a theme that has defined his journey from a rough-and-tumble childhood in Brooklyn to broadcasting superstardom.

The Early Years

Born and raised in Brooklyn as Larry Zeiger, King knew he wanted to be a broadcaster from age five, but his prospects did not look good. By the time he was nine, his father, a bar owner, had died, and his mother went on welfare to support Larry and his brother.

Larry graduated from high school with less-than-stellar grades, but with the dream of being on radio. Instead of going to college, he took a job as a mail clerk with the United Parcel Service, delivering packages to radio studios in New York. By chance, he met a broadcaster who encouraged him to go down to Miami, where the radio industry was flourishing and looking for new talent.

King quit his job and hopped on a bus to Miami, where he slept on his uncle’s sofa.

“I had odd jobs around New York City, but in the back of my mind I knew I wanted to be a broadcaster, and I knew this was my chance,” says King. “I’ve always been a risk-taker.”

Despite the hopes of success, he had a hard time finding a job, and ended up working as a janitor at a small radio station. But eventually, King landed a job as a disc jockey at a Miami station, and took off from there. In Miami, King became a popular media personality, hosting interview programs for WIOD-Radio and WTVJ-TV and writing a column for a Miami newspaper.

“The Larry King Show” went national in 1978, becoming the first nationwide call-in show. Then in 1985, “Larry King Live” debuted on CNN, and King became among the best-known broadcasting personalities in the world.