The former TODAY co-anchor talks about her breast cancer diagnosis.
In an in-depth, heartfelt essay, Katie recently revealed that she was diagnosed with breast cancer on June 21, 2022. In the essay, she details how a long overdue mammogram led to the detection of a highly treatable tumor, which her doctors then treated with a lumpectomy and radiation therapy.
As most readers know, Katie has been helping to fight cancer for decades. Obviously, it’s personal: Like many people the world over, she’s been affected by cancer long before her own diagnosis. Her first husband, Jay, died of colon cancer; her sister, Emily, died of pancreatic cancer; both of her parents also received diagnoses. In reaction to this pain and loss, she’s been using all the resources in her power to make a difference. She famously televised her own colonoscopy to normalize the screening process for viewers. She co-founded Stand Up to Cancer, an organization that funds collaborative cancer research. And of course, she uses Katie Couric Media as a platform to deliver expert advice on the latest treatments, survivor stories, and practical approaches to prevention (like when to get your first mammogram, information on different types of breast cancer, and how to do a self breast exam).
To continue passionately advocating for awareness and visibility, Katie returned to the TODAY Show on October 3, 2022 to talk about the diagnosis. She spoke to Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie about her cancer experience.
“I’m feeling just fine,” she told the hosts. “I finished radiation last week. They said it makes you tired. I was actually not too tired from it.”
Katie also thanks her radiologist for acting very quickly after noticing something out of the ordinary: “She said, ‘I think there’s something we really need to biopsy and I want to do it today.’ So I thought, ‘Oh my God, you must be kidding me.’ And then when I found out the next day, I was pretty stunned, and I think those words ‘it’s cancerous’ or ‘you have cancer’ do stop you in your tracks, but she told me it was treatable. We needed to have a plan.”
A plan for treatment is life-saving, but Katie also had to grapple with the emotional aspects of a cancer diagnosis, too; namely, breaking the news to her two daughters. Katie wrote about her daughters’ initial reactions in her essay — both Carrie and Ellie cried over Facetime while Katie tried her best to reassure them. In the TODAY interview, Katie elaborated on that difficult conversation: “…I saw on their faces, you know, it’s just hard to deliver that news, no matter how you do it. But I assured them that I was going to be fine. And Carrie came with me when I got my lumpectomy, when I was being wheeled into the operating room. She was singing ‘The Arms of an Angel.’ She’s so funny…They’ve been incredibly supportive.”
Katie also used the interview to raise awareness about breast density. Katie has dense breasts — alongside 40 to 50 percent of American women between ages 40 and 75. Dense breasts increase cancer risk and make diagnosis trickier — Katie said, “my radiologist compared it to trying to find snowballs in a field of snow.”
Katie mentioned that dense breasts often require secondary screening, so advocating for your health is very important. Visiting a caring and conscientious provider helps, too: “You have to ask your radiologists, or your radiologist, ideally, should be telling you, ‘You have dense breasts,’ and then you often need secondary screening.”
For more of Katie’s genuine, candid takes on her cancer journey, watch the video of her interview below.
