Richard Cohen, a veteran journalist and the husband of Meredith Vieira, died on Christmas Eve at the age of 76 after living more than 50 years with multiple sclerosis and surviving two cancer diagnoses.
News of his death was announced on the Todayshow on Tuesday, Jan. 7. Hoda Kotb said that he was “surrounded by his family and love” at the time of his death, including Vieira and their three kids: daughter Lily, 32, and sons Gabriel 34, and Benjamin, 36.
All had been together around Thanksgiving, Kotb noted, “concerned they were going to lose him early. Instead, they got a glorious month with their dad.”
“She’s in really good spirits,” Savannah Guthrieadded of Vieira. “She was such a beautiful and devoted wife to Richard and he adored Meredith. And hanging out with them, they were like the most fun and entertaining, irreverent, cool couple you could hang out with.”
Cohen and Viera were married for 38 years, tying the knot in 1986. Diagnosed with MS at the age of 25, he famously told Vieira he had the chronic disease when they were on their second date.
“I told her about the illness, because I sort of learned the hard way to get it on the table,” he recalled to Yahoo Life in 2019. “And she really didn’t blink.”
I’ve always been of the school of thought that you could get hit by a bus the next day, any one of us could,” said Vieira. “It certainly wasn’t enough to scare me off.”
Instead, Vieira became Cohen’s fiercest supporter. Over their nearly four decades together, she stood by Cohen’s side as he left his long reporting career for CBS News and became an advocate for those living with MS.
Humor was one of the ways the pair coped through the tough times, but so was radical honesty. “We definitely allow each other to vent,” she told us in 2018. “That’s part of the deal. Certainly he’s allowed to vent, because he’s got chronic illness. But I am too. Because there are days I can’t stand it and the limitations it puts on the entire family. It’s good to say it. But we don’t dwell.”
“You can think, ‘Why us?’ but then it’s like, ‘Why not us?’ ” continued Vieira. “So many people are dealing with stuff and it puts it into perspective.”
Meredith Vieira and Richard Cohen in May 2018.
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The chronic disease — which affects the central nervous system, including the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves — would eventually lead Vieira to step aside from her career in broadcast journalism. An original co-host on The View, moved from the daytime talk show in 2006 to co-anchor Today. She remained a part of the program through 2011, when she retired to spend more time with Cohen and their kids.
“Time is one of those weird things,” she said on air at the time. “You can never get enough of it, and it just keeps ticking away. And I know that I want to spend more of mine with my husband, Richard, and my kids.”
Meredith Vieira.
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In Cohen’s 2018 memoir Chasing Hope: A Patient’s Deep Dive into Stem Cells, Faith, and the Future, he wrote about the impact MS had on his loved ones.
“Chronic illness is a family affair. Spouses have the burden of tending to the needs of a loved one, even when they would secretly rather push him out a window,” he wrote. “I knew they should not be treated as spectators when they are in the ring with us.”
In addition to facing the symptoms of MS — which, towards the end of Cohen’s life, left him legally blind — Cohen survived colon cancer twice and a blood clot that appeared in his lung.
But throughout it all, Cohen remained hopeful for a cure. “I want to have a long-term relationship with hope. I really do,” he wrote in his book. “Making that intimate connection is a challenge. For many years I pushed hope aside, labeling it a crutch. In my research for Chasing Hope, smart people made the case for hope. They came from different places, but all had found the promised land. I decided I could use a little bit of the stuff. Perhaps I need a lot.”
