After two long months, everyone’s favorite weatherman is back.
“It’s a really special Friday morning,” an emotional Savannah Guthrie said as she opened the Jan. 6 edition of TODAY. “And I’m sorry, but the tears are already flowing.”
Her eyes had good reason for being a little leaky: After weeks and weeks, iconic weather anchor and TODAY Show co-host Al Roker was finally back in Studio 1A, and he got quite the reception from the colleagues he’s worked with for years. Roker’s return to the stage elicited applause from the crew and huge hugs from Guthrie and co-anchor Hoda Kotb, who explained to him just how much he’s been missed.
“The crew is weepy. The crowd outside has been waiting for you,” Kotb said. “They’ve been bummed every day we’ve walked out there. They’re like, ‘Where is Al?'”
The feeling was definitely mutual. Holding the hands of his fellow on-air personalities, Roker shared how meaningful it was for him to return to the place he belongs after such a long stretch of being away.
“I have missed you guys so very much. You are my second family,” he said. “It’s just great to be back — and to be wearing pants.”
Roker has, of course, been laid up over the last couple of months. He was rushed to the hospital in November 2022 for blood clots in his legs, which turned out to have also traveled to his lungs. Doctors told him they were likely caused by internal bleeding Roker experienced after contracting Covid-19. As a result, he required a major surgery that was serious enough to cause him to miss the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade for the first time in 27 years.
“It’s been the hardest one yet, and you know I’ve had my share of surgeries,” Roker said during a virtual visit to TODAY back in December. “It gives you a profound sense of gratitude for this outpouring of prayers and thanks.”
Always by his side along this health journey has been his wife, ABC News correspondent Deborah Roberts, who Guthrie called a “warrior woman” during Friday’s show. Roberts joined Roker and his fellow anchors for a chat about his recovery, and she revealed just how scary his condition had really gotten.
“It’s not lost on us that this is a major, major thing for Al to be here,” Roberts told the team. “He is a living, breathing miracle. He really is. I have to say — and I’m not overstating it, I don’t think — Al was a very, very, very sick man. And I think most people did not know that.”
The revelation about how serious Roker’s ailment was moved everyone on the TODAY couch, and they got even more emotional as Roberts described the moment she finally knew her husband would eventually be strong enough to be his old self again.
“We were in the hospital, and through this very scratchy voice — he was so gaunt and exhausted — he said, ‘I’m going to make a spatchcock turkey for Christmas,'” Roberts recalled. “I didn’t know whether to burst into tears or just to beam. That will always be the moment for me where I knew that this man — I mean, I’m sitting here hoping he’s going to make it to Christmas, and he wants to make a turkey.”
