Why Sheinelle Jones Is Coming Back to Work 4 Months After Husband’s Death

Sheinelle Jones wants Today show viewers to cheer her on as she returns to the show in the wake of her husband Uche Ojeh’s death. 

The 47-year-old co-host made an emotional and inspiring return to the NBC morning show on Friday, Sept. 5, first sitting down for a tell-all interview with Savannah Guthrie about her husband’s private journey after being diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. 

During the interview, Jones shared that their family, which includes three kids Kayin, 15, and twins Clara and Uche, 13, learned of Ojeh’s diagnosis in late 2023. They choose not to announce it publicly because as Jones said, Ojeh was “fiercely private.”

Jones stayed on the Today show for another year before taking an extended leave of absence in late 2024 to be by her husband’s side before his death in May. 

Jones shared that she didn’t like when people discussed how they were impressed that she was able to “fake” her happiness on TV amid her husband’s diagnosis. 

“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.”

Now, on the other side of Ojeh’s death, Jones is determined to keep going both for herself and her family and as an inspiration to others. 

She asked viewers to look at her through a different lens, adding, “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.”

She urged others struggling with similar circumstances to refuse to let cancer defeat them. 

“Cancer doesn’t have to steal our joy,” Jones said. “We can get up, we can get out of bed, and we can go to work, we can go to school, we can squeeze the most out of the days that we have. And honestly, I feel like Uche’s heartbeat lives on in mine. So I owe it to him to just squeeze the most I can out of this thing.”

She plans to carry her husband with her in this next chapter. 

“We can grieve but we can also still try to move forward. We don’t move on, but we move forward with our loved ones,” she added. “And I hope that just by me being on the set and me returning to work, it’s like, ‘Okay, if I can do it, so can you,’ ” she continued.

As Jones returned to the 3rd Hour of Today, which she co-hosts, she got candid about her fears.

She recalled a conversation she had with Maria Shriver before her appearance. “I said, ‘What if I can’t laugh the same? Or what if I’m not the same?’ “Jones recalled. “She said, ‘You’re not the same. We’re still gonna love you.’ So when I got out to the Plaza, and when I sat on that couch, I’m like, ‘Okay.’ When I lost Uche, it feels like I’ve lost my home, not my physical home, but it feels like I’ve lost my home. She said, ‘The show is also your home.’ And so I think so many things have been unknown for me, so coming back here has been like, ‘Okay, Here’s my home. I know this.’ “

Co-host Craig Melvin praised Jones for her inspirational appearance, telling her, “I think you coming back sends a message to everyone who’s lost someone or who’s been through something, everyone who’s had to deal with grief and that’s all of us that you can come back. You put one foot in front of the other every day. The folks who are watching and listening right now, a lot of them can relate to you on a different level now.”