Al Roker Says Surviving Prostate Cancer in 2020 Helped ‘Jumpstart’ His Health (Exclusive)

Since 1979, Al Roker says he’s averaged some sort of surgery every three and a half years or so.

Sitting in the PEOPLE studio, having come straight from 30 Rockefeller Plaza and that morning’s Today broadcast, the weatherman jokes that, by his math, he’s “just about due” for another procedure.

“That said, I’ve kind of bounced back pretty quickly,” Roker says, while recalling his 2020 prostate cancer diagnosis. “But in the back of your mind, you’re like, ‘Well, is this the one time you don’t?'”

A Today meteorologist for nearly 30 years, Roker has never taken himself too seriously, but his health remains another story. He had his first knee replacement about 25 years ago (he’s since had his other knee replaced and the initial knee revised). Then, in 2002, he had gastric bypass surgery. In 2022, he was hospitalized with blood clots in his left leg and lungs and had to have surgery to remove his gall bladder and resect his colon.

The 2020 cancer diagnosis, however, left him “deeply concerned,” he says.

“Prostate is one word, but the emphasis is on cancer. You hear the word ‘cancer’ and your mind kind of fritzes out. And that’s one of the things I did learn: You really do need to have somebody else in the room with you,” he says of the morning in September 2020 that he was first diagnosed. His wife, award-winning journalist Deborah Roberts, had wanted to go with him. He’d insisted she didn’t need to, as he didn’t expect the appointment to be “a big deal.”

“Because actually, my first thought as [my doctor] was talking — I wasn’t really listening to him, I was thinking, ‘Gosh, Deborah’s just going to kill me because she wanted to be here and she wasn’t here,'” Roker says. “When I finally started listening, it was, ‘You’re going to need to consider options.’ And that was the beginning of the journey.”

Because of the pandemic, Roker hadn’t had his routine check-up with his doctor for about a year and a half. But at this appointment, his bloodwork showed elevated prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels, which continued to rise. A subsequent biopsy ultimately confirmed the cancer.

Roker and Roberts (together at every appointment from the moment after he was diagnosed) proceeded to meet with numerous medical professionals to discuss the various treatment options available to them.

“[Deborah’s] very good. I mean, look, that’s what she does. She’s a journalist. So she asks all the questions and the follow-ups,” Roker says. “And then we started to plot out the path, going to meet with each expert in their field for treatment and came up with a plan.”

Roker opted to have surgery, performed in November 2020, to remove his prostate.

“It’s a relatively straightforward surgery. I think they kept me overnight just to make sure I didn’t have any complications. But [then] you get up, and physical therapy folks come in,” he says of his relatively quick recovery. “The doctor said, ‘Listen, walking is probably the best medicine for you … By the end of the week of you being home, you should be walking about five miles a day.’ ”

Always one to crack a joke when he can, Roker also says his doctor’s orders reminded him of one of his favorite Rodney Dangerfield comedy bits: “So I went to my doctor, Dr. Vinny Bumbach. He said, ‘Hey, you need to lose some weight. I want you to walk five miles a day. Call me at the end of the week.’ So at the end of the week, I called him, he said, ‘How you doing? Where are you?’ I said, ‘I’m doing pretty good, but I’m 35 miles from home.'”

All jokes aside, Roker did walk. He walked around Central Park, catheter and all — the “hardest part” being the “bag on the side of [my] leg.” He expressed gratitude for a relatively easy and uncomplicated recovery, crediting his surgeon, Dr. Vincent Laudone at Memorial Sloan Kettering, for his good work. He returned to the Today show about two weeks after the procedure.

“The bonus was that it kind of jump-started me to try to get back in shape. Walking became, in a sense, my therapy, because I had done it before. In fact, in 2010, I ran the New York City Marathon,” Roker says. “Well, ran is a relative term, but I did the New York City Marathon, and so [this] got me back into my fitness routine. And the doctor said, ‘Listen, you’re in decent shape but as you get older, anytime you have other issues, your fitness level plays a big part in it.'”

Roker also never shied away from discussing his journey publicly — in fact, he felt strongly that he ought to try and make some lemonade out of the lemons he’d been dealt.

“This is a disease that obviously affects men, but men of color — especially if you’re African-American — you’re twice as likely to get it, and you’re more than twice than likely to die from it if you’re not diagnosed. So I thought maybe we can do some good here,” Roker says. “If you’ve got a bully pulpit, why not use it? And with men in general, I think there’s a bit of a stigma about [prostate cancer]. Is it maybe a little embarrassing or sensitive? Perhaps, but there are any number of things I would rather die from than embarrassment.”

Roker was declared cancer-free in May 2021, six months after the surgery, getting his PSA monitored every six months after that; now, five years later, Roker’s back to an annual check-up.

“I’ve been very fortunate. I try not to use the word blessed, because while I do like to think that, to me the flip side of that is, well, people who don’t have a good outcome weren’t blessed, and I don’t believe that. So I like to just say I’m fortunate. I was fortunate that I’ve always been relatively resilient coming out of these issues,” he says.

And he still walks. All over the place, really, and as much as he can. He’s even the “Chief Motivation Officer” for Start Today, the brand’s fitness franchise.

“This whole thing with the walking, and it kind of started out of this. I’d post some stuff online and people would respond to it. And it just blew up. The great thing about walking is that other than a pair of sneakers, it takes no equipment whatsoever. And everybody can do it. And you can do it at your own pace, you can do it as a group, you can do it by yourself,” Roker says.

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“So that’s how, in a way, [Start Today] really started up. And for better or for worse, I kind of became the face of it. And so here we are now, five years later, and it’s now an app, and we’ve got the trainers and we’ve got nutritionists and wellness folks, and it’s like, ‘Wow, literally, the journey of a thousand miles began with the first step.'”