Sheinelle Jones breaks silence on husband’s death, returns to ‘Today’

Sheinelle Jones is resuming her “Today” show cohosting duties after stepping away from the program in December 2024.

Jones, 47, took an extended hiatus as her husband, Uche Ojeh, battled an aggressive glioblastoma, which is a form of brain cancer. Uche died at age 45 in May. During her first day back on “Today” on Friday, Sept. 5, Jones sat down with her coanchor Savannah Guthrie for a candid conversation about grief.

“In this moment, I’m OK. Day to day, I’m OK. From a macro picture, how am I doing? My heart is shattered. My heart is shattered in a million pieces,” Jones said. “The life that I’ve known since I was 19 is no more. I’ve always wanted kids, and I have three kids of my own now, and they’ve lost their dad. … And it sucks.”

Jones and Ojeh were college sweethearts who would’ve celebrated 18 years of marriage this month. They shared son Kayin, 16, and fraternal twins Clara and Uche Jr., 13.

“I’m proud of my kids for how we’ve been able to try to pull through,” Jones said on Friday. “But it’s horrible. It’s just horrible.”

Jones noted that there are times when she wishes she could just stay in bed and grieve, but she can’t, because she has “three little beings who are watching me.” When it comes to guiding her children through their grief, Jones tells them to let waves of sadness come and go.

“What I’ve told my kids is, it’s almost like rain can’t last forever. And so when the rain comes, in some ways I’ve learned to just look up at the rain and let it be a cleansing rain and let it clear the air. I don’t run away from crying anymore when it comes to grief.”

Although Jones is allowing herself to feel the pain of losing her husband, she’s also choosing to find moments of joy. She noted that it “bothered” her when people told her she was good at “faking” being happy during her husband’s cancer battle.

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“I thought, ‘I’m not faking it. My joy is real.’ I was on television for almost a year with this [going on behind the scenes],” she said. “If you see me now and you see me laughing, or you turn on the morning show and I’m laughing or having a good time, you root for me, because I’m fighting for my joy.”

Jones also spoke about her relationship with her husband, noting that their connection only “got stronger” when he was fighting for his life.

“When he was dying, I would say, ‘This sucks, and it’s scary, but if you asked me [and told me] this was gonna be my fate, I would do it all over again,’” she said.

Jones cohosts the third hour of “Today,” which airs weekdays on NBC at 9 a.m. ET.