Sheinelle Jones will be returning to “Today” this Friday after an extended break following the death of Uche Ojeh, her husband of nearly 18 years. Her co-hosts made the announcement Tuesday morning on the show.

“We’ve got some other great news that we are so excited to share with you and it involves a member of our own ‘Today’ family,” Craig Melvin said Tuesday on the show after the long Labor Day weekend.

“Yes, our beloved Sheinelle will be returning to the show,” co-host Savannah Guthrie said. “She and her family have been through so much after the devastating loss of her husband, Uche.”

Ojeh died in May of glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, at age 45. Jones has been absent from the NBC morning show since last December, when she excused herself to handle “a family health matter.” At the time, she didn’t publicly disclose what she was going through.

Guthrie explained Tuesday that she and Jones, who co-hosts the third hour of “Today,” sat for a pretaped interview that will air Friday.

“We shared a really personal conversation, talking about how she has carried on and found the strength these past few months,” the host said. “She calls this experience a ‘beautiful nightmare.’ And she has thoughts on grief that are so touching.”

Ojeh married Jones in September 2007 after the two met during the 1990s at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, when she was walking to class and he was a high school senior visiting campus. She decided to act like a “fake tour guide,” she told her alma mater’s magazine in 2024.

“I told him I would take him around,” Jones said, “because he was cute.”

She is now raising their three children: son Kayin, who just turned 16, and twins Clara and Uche, 13.

Glioblastoma is the most aggressive form of brain and spinal cord cancer, the Glioblastoma Foundation says, with a current standard of care that doesn’t help much. The average survival time for people who get treatment is 15 months after diagnosis, according to the foundation, compared with three to six months for those who do not. While research on new treatments has been promising, according to the Mayo Clinic, the condition has no cure.

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