The Huffington Post reports that “talkmeister” Larry King’s “stunning TV-personality wife,” Shawn Southwick King, has allegedly gone into rehab for addiction to painkillers that have been prescribed for her migraines. King recently released a country album titled “In My Own Back Yard.”

Those who read my feature this week know that I wrote about seeing Larry King’s family in their natural habitat in, well, their own back yard:

King, as dry and shriveled as a gremlin, walks across the lawn and stands by the pool, next to his sixth wife and his two young sons, Chance and Cannon. He starts off, as all public speakers have been taught, with a joke. He mentions the age difference between him and his wife: King, who is 74, says that people ask him if the fact that his wife is only 48 worries him. Not at all, King says: “If she dies, she dies.” The crowd ripples with the kind of laughter that you get when you make a joke about your wife dying. One of the little boys gets a frightened look on his face. King puts a comforting hand on his son’s head and says, “I was just kidding. It was just a joke.”

It’s really weird, on a personal level, to read on a news site that a woman you’ve recently seen in a dysfunctional family interaction has gone into rehab.