Yahoo Lifestyle Savannah Guthrie Comments on Meredith Vieira's Heartbreaking News
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One of the Today show's former news anchors is saying goodbye to a loved one.
On January 7, the NBC morning show broke the news regarding previous host Meredith Vieira. It was revealed her husband, Richard Cohen, passed away at age 76 on Christmas Eve. A veteran journalist for CBS News, Richard lived with multiple sclerosis (MS) for more than 50 years and was a two-time cancer survivor. He and Meredith were married for 38 years and had three children (daughter Lily and sons Gabriel and Benjamin) together.
When Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie made the announcement, the latter spoke out about the couple's long marriage and how Meredith was feeling amid her heartbreaking loss.
"She was such a beautiful and devoted wife to Richard and he adored Meredith," Savannah stated live on the air, per a report from People. "And hanging out with them, they were like the most fun and entertaining, irreverent, cool couple you could hang out with."
While Richard was alive, he and Meredith advocated for those living with MS. He also was open about his own experience battling the disease, which led him to write multiple memoirs on the subject (including Blindsided, published in 2005, and Chasing Hope in 2018). He also spoke about his outlook on living with MS on the Today show, where he opened up about his diagnosis in his early twenties.
"I was diagnosed when I was 25 years old and essentially told there is no hope," he stated while appearing alongside Meredith back in May 2018. "Diagnosed and adios. Nothing much we can do."
What's more, Meredith was always a source of support for her late husband — something he was particularly grateful for after telling her of his MS diagnosis on their second date.
"I told her about the illness, because I sort of learned the hard way to get it on the table. And she really didn’t blink," he told Yahoo! Life in 2019.
"I've always been of the school of thought that you could get hit by a bus the next day, any one of us could," Meredith added in the same interview. "It certainly wasn't enough to scare me off."
Our hearts are with Meredith and her family at this time.
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