Al Roker Returns To ‘Today’, Telling Co-Hosts “I Went In For One Operation And I Got Four Free”

Today weather anchor Al Roker made an emotional return to the morning show Friday, telling his tearful co-hosts, “My heart is just bursting. I’m just so thrilled to see all of you and all of the crew. Right now I’m just running on adrenaline.”

Roker was first hospitalized in November for blood clots in his lungs and leg. He was released on Thanksgiving day, but returned a short time later due to complications. He was released again on Dec. 8, but has been absent from Today – as well as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting – since falling ill.

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Roker was greeted today at the top of the show, with co-anchors Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie welcoming him back to the studio. “I have missed you guys so very much,” Roker told them. “You are my second family,”

Roker and his wife, the ABC News correspondent Deborah Roberts, later joined Kotb, Guthrie, Craig Melvin and Carson Daly to discuss his health scare, which Roberts said was much more serious than the public might have known.

“He is a living, breathing miracle,” Roberts said, also saying that her husband was a “medical mystery” for a couple weeks at the start of his illness. “Al went through a lot of tests, a lot of scopes, and there was just so much that had to be done, and a surgery if you don’t mind me saying, a major, major surgery, and we were just on pins and needles every day.”

“I’m not overstating it,” she said. “Al was a very, very, very sick man.”

Roker explained that, after falling ill with Covid he developed the blood clots. “I had two complicating things,” he told his colleagues. “I had blood clots that they think came up after I had Covid in September, and then I had this internal bleeding going on. I lost half my blood, and they were trying to figure out where it was.

“Finally,” he continued, “they went in, did the surgery, and it ended up that I had two bleeding ulcers. They had to resection the colon and take out my gallbladder. I went in for one operation, and I got four free.”

Watch Roker’s panel discussion above, and his top-of-show return below.

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