Richard Cohen, Journalist And Husband Of Meredith Vieira, Dead At 76

Richard Cohen, journalist and husband to television personality Meredith Vieira, has died at the age of 76 after years of living with multiple sclerosis and surviving two cancer diagnoses.

Cohen died on Dec. 24, per an announcement made on the Today show on Tuesday, Jan. 7. Host Hoda Kotb said he was surrounded by his loved ones, including his wife, daughter and two sons. Cohen was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the age of 25 in 1973 and battled colon cancer in 1999 and 2000.

The New York native married the former Today show host in 1986. The couple was together for 38 years before his death. He broke the details of his chronic illness with Vieira 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.

In his career, Cohen won three Emmys for his work as a CBS News journalist. He was a also a former senior producer for CBS News and CNN, and occasionally wrote columns for the "Health and Fitness" section of The New York Times. In 2018, he published his memoir Chasing Hope: A Patient's Deep Dive into Stem Cells, Faith, and the Future, and detailed the impact MS had on his loved ones.