Driving Mr. King: Larry King’s Former Driver Shares Funny (Sports) Tales About Talk Show Host
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
Joey Diorio knew Larry King well.
King, the famed talk show host who died at 87 this week, was an ol’ Brooklyn boy who loved going to New York Yankees and New York Mets Opening Day baseball games every April.
And King’s driver was none other than Diorio, a 67-year-old chauffeur with 49 years of New York City driving experience who lives on eastern Long Island.
Diorio, whose clients include former Sacramento Kings owners/Golden Knights founding partners Joe and Gavin Maloof of Las Vegas, former Las Vegas hotel tycoon Steve Wynn, and movie/TV producer Jerry Bruckheimer, recalled driving to Yankees Opening Day in the Bronx in April 2009 with King, former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and ex-Yankees greats/Hall-of-Famers Yogi Berra and Reggie Jackson in his 1971 Cadillac pictured here. “Yogi loved Larry — he was a Brooklyn boy,” Diorio said.
King was in the back seat with his brother, Marty, and Jackson when Berra said on Opening Day 2009, “Let me drive,” Diorio recalled Saturday. His Caddy was in mint condition, purchased with only 1,300 miles on the odometer.
“Steinbrenner told me, ‘Don’t let him drive.’ ”
“But Yogi says, ‘I own one of these cars.’ ”
So Diorio pulled over and lets Berra take the wheel, while Steinbrenner was on the passenger side with Diorio in the middle.
Meanwhile, Larry King — in the back seat with brother Marty and ex-slugger Reggie Jackson — was laughing his ass off.
“So we’re on the way and Yogi passes Yankee Stadium and gets off at an exit by the Bronx Zoo,” Diorio said. “Yogi says, ‘Listen guys, we’re lost, but good news we’re making fantastic time.’ ”
King roared with laughter at that line.
And the guys in the ’71 Caddy ended up finding their way to Yankee Stadium just in time for Opening Day 2009 — a year before Steinbrenner died, Diorio said. “In fact, me and Larry bought Steinbrenner a cake for his next to last birthday.”
Diorio adored driving King around Brooklyn or down Fifth Avenue.
“We’d laugh and have a great time together,” King’s driver said. Here’s King with Diorio cruising Fifth Avenue in New York.
“I never seen him say no to a picture or an autograph with someone,” Diorio said.
“He loved the Mets, he loved the Yankees, he loved the Dodgers. We would go by (the old site) of Ebbets Field in Brooklyn,” he said. “We took his kids, Chance and Cannon.”
Diorio said King liked Steinbrenner and was also friends with former Mets owner Fred Wilpon, so he drove King to the Queens for Mets games there. Diorio shared this photo of King with estranged wife Shawn at a Mets game where King wore his Dodgers jacket.
Diorio recalled a crazy connection — ” My best friend owned Larry King’s old house in Brooklyn.”
In fact, “Larry went up to his old bedroom on the third floor.” There, King found a trap door that stored his mother’s sewing machine from decades earlier.
“Larry could not believe it. We would cruise to pizza shops, old candy stores. Sometimes, Sandy Koufax would come with Larry,” Diorio said, “We’d go to old sites around Brooklyn, and Larry would reminisce. I told him, ‘I knew everything about Brooklyn. I’ll get you there.’ We even went to his old synagogue and there were old pictures of Larry and his friend on the wall at the basketball court from 1949.”
Diorio said he even took King to boot stores where the former broadcaster bought two boots made from ostrich and eel skins for $700 a pair. King wanted to break in the boots, so he went down walking the New York City street. “I see him walking like a bow-legged cowboy holding onto the window of a store. He said, ‘They’re killing me.’ So I gave him a lift. All we did was laugh and joke around.”
King even gave Diorio a 1955 World Series baseball signed by Dodgers pitcher Johnny Podres.
Because King loved baseball, Diorio took him upstate New York to the Baseball Hall of Fame, where the two had a grand time checking out Ty Cobb’s old baseball glove, Babe Ruth’s crown and Lou Gehrig’s jersey.
“Larry never felt like a client. He was like a father or an uncle. He treated me like a son,” Diorio said. “We had so many laughs and we met so many people . . . . I charged him half the price. I told Larry, ‘It’s not even a job to drive you. I’d drive you for free.’ Every day was fun.”
