Sheinelle Jones Reveals Why She Didn’t Share Husband’s Cancer Journey Until After His Death

Sheinelle Jones is opening up about navigating grief and why it was important for her to keep her husband’s brain cancer journey private before his death.

The Today co-host, 47, marked her return to the morning show on Friday, Sept. 5 — nearly four months after the death of her husband, Uche Ojeh — in a pre-taped conversation with Savannah Guthrie. The two discussed loss, hope and family, before Jones sat down with the rest of her Today colleagues and detailed her decision to keep the health news private.

“There may be some people who are watching and they say, ‘Why didn’t you share?’ Like, ‘Why did she hold this for so long?’ And what I will tell you is that Uche was fiercely private. I chose the spotlight but he did not,” Jones said.

“He was not on Instagram, he wasn’t on Facebook. And when he got this diagnosis, he asked me, he said, ‘Please, I want to handle this privately.’ And he was so protective of us — and the kids — over the years, that it was my turn to be protective.”

Jones’ husband died in May after being diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. He was 45. She had been on an extended leave from Today since December 2024.

As Jones explained on air, her husband was also “so loyal,” so she considered the moment her “turn to be loyal.”

“And we honored that,” she said. “And so that is why now I feel comfortable talking,” she added, detailing how she and her late husband “experienced the best of humanity” during her time away during his cancer journey.

Jones described the experience as “a beautiful nightmare,” to Guthrie.

She recalled her time in the hospital with Ojeh, saying, “And we would just hold hands and the nurses would come in and they’re call us the ‘love birds.’ And we’d just look at each other and say, ‘I love you’… that’s what I mean by ‘beautiful nightmare,’ because I found beauty in the nightmare. And trust me, it is a nightmare to watch a 45-year-old do two triathlons and live and breathe off of soccer as kids, to take a guy like that and watch him have to deal with this fight was a nightmare. But the way he fought it and the way we rallied together and the way we saw the best of humanity, that was beautiful.”

During her conversation with Guthrie, she said she knew about her husband’s diagnosis for more than a year before she took a leave of absence from the show.

“I thought, ‘I’m not faking it. My joy is real.’ I was on television for almost a year with this,” she shared. “I would do the show and then hop in the car and go be with him during chemo.”

From the start, Jones said she thought her husband would pull through.

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“I believed that he was going to be okay. I knew it was gonna be tough, but we all believed that he would be fine,” she said.

Jones initially told fans in January via an Instagram post that she’d been taking time away from the show “to deal with a family health matter,” and she thanked her “Today show family” for their support and fans for their “kindness.” Months later, on May 23, Jones’ co-hosts announced that her husband of 18 years had died.

Jones and Ojeh were married for nearly two decades.

They met at Northwestern University in the late ’90s, when Jones — then a freshman — offered to show Ojeh, a visiting high school senior, around campus. The couple share three kids: Kayin, 16, and twins Clara and Uche, 13.

Jones said that through Ojeh’s journey, her husband’s faith kept him strong.

“I watched him in his toughest moments, his faith is what gave him peace,” Jones shared. “So I think, ‘Okay, if Uche can have faith, when his life is on the line, surely I can and surely we all can.’ “