Al Roker and Deborah Roberts are an iconic power couple who have been together for almost 30 years and have proven that, despite any challenges they’ve faced due to Roker’s health scares, their love story stands the test of time. The duo stopped by for ET’s “Spilling the E-Tea” to reminisce about their epic love story and share all the sweet details of their ever-growing family life.
While Al jokes that they have probably “forgotten more about each other than we remember,” it’s clear that the couple is still as in love with one another as they were when they tied the knot on Sept. 16, 1995.
“Do you remember our first date?” Deborah asks her husband, to which Al responds, “Here’s what I remember: how I got the first date.”
The beloved Today show host goes on to recall how he was “in the friend zone” when Deborah asked him to look after her apartment while she covered the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
“You were just supposed to just pick up the mail and water my plants,” Deborah noted, which Al concedes is the truth. However, Roker admits he took a closer look around her kitchen.
He recalls: “I would go in, and you know, I do like food, and I wanted to see what your kitchen was like. I opened the pantry and there were cobwebs. I open the fridge, there’s an old piece of cheese, some Grey Poupon mustard and a bottle of champagne, I think, maybe. And a spider inside who had gotten trapped.”
“I opened up the oven, and there was cardboard on the racks, and for a moment, I was flummoxed, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, she’s never used this oven. She’s been living here for a year [and] she’s never used this oven,'” he adds. “So I stocked the fridge, I stocked the pantry, and I left flowers on the table and a little note that said ‘Welcome home.’ And then I asked you out and we went out.”
Deborah quips that Al “kind of worn me down with that,” and endeared himself to her, which helped him escape the “friend zone.”
“You endeared me to you because I just thought of you as a colleague and friend, and you were a nice guy. You made me laugh and you were always a lot of fun to be with, but then I thought, ‘What a sweet guy,’ and you also talked a lot about your parents. You talk a lot about your parents — a little too much,” she adds. “But I thought, ‘This is a good guy.’ So anyway, there we go when the first date happened.”
The 20/20 anchor admits that the beloved Today host is the more romantic of the two, saying there’s “no question about it.”
She gushes about how Al will take note of the things she talks about and will bring them back up in the sweetest way. “You’ll hear something that I said [like], ‘Oh there’s this great book that I thought was so wonderful that I heard somebody talking about it.’ Then I’ll come home one day and it’s wrapped as a gift on the bed,” she says.
“You are just an incurable romantic… You are so thoughtful and I think a lot of people think of you as just this funny guy — and you are. But you’re also very sensitive,” she tells her husband of more than two decades. “You’re very sentimental, and you remember all kinds of little things, and that is so sweet to me.”
She says, “I mean, there are times when I come out of the bathroom after brushing my teeth, and, you know, getting ready for bed, and you’ve got some little something on my pillow or on the nightstand that is just so sweet. Little sonnets. He bought me a little book of sonnets once and just left it by my bed just to read.”
Al can’t help but interject with a joke, saying, “I gave you something to read so you wouldn’t have to talk to me.”
Undeterred, Deborah shares that the morning show anchor slips “little notes in my suitcase so when I’m traveling, if I’m gonna be gone for two to three days, [I can] open this one Sunday night, open this one Monday morning, and it is something hilarious or sweet and sentimental.”
And the couple gushes about being grandparents after Al’s daughter, Courtney Roker Laga — whom he shares with ex-wife Alice Bell — welcomed her first child.
“She’s so beautiful and so sweet,” Deborah coos. “But I feel like, ‘Wow, we did that,’ and, you know, it’s so good to hand her back.”
Al agrees, noting that “that’s the beauty” of being grandparents and empty nesters. “See, it’s the best of parenting without any of the responsibility,” he says. “It’s fantastic.”
