Richard Cohen obit

Richard Cohen Dies: Emmy-Winning Journalist Husband Of Meredith Vieira Was 76

 

He was not on the list.

Richard Cohen, a former senior producer on CNN and CBS News who was married for 38 years to Today anchor Meredith Vieira, died of following a two-month battle with pneumonia December 24 after living with multiple sclerosis for more than five decades. He was 76.

Cohen’s death was announced this morning on both NBC’s Today and ABC’s The View. Vieira was an original host on The View, and Cohen was a frequent visitor to the daytime talk show during her tenure there.

News of Cohen’s death was shared on both shows at the request of Vieira. Today‘s Hoda Kotb and The View‘s Joy Behar said Cohen, who had twice overcome cancer, passed away on Christmas Eve “surrounded by his family and love.”

Quoting Vieira, Behar said that the date of his passing was “fitting, because he came into this world on Valentine’s Day,” and his Christmas Eve death “felt like perfect symmetry.” Cohen was born February 14, 1948, on Long Island, New York.

Behar, who described Cohen as a longtime friend, described him as “refreshing” and “good humored” about his MS and other health battles. “I remember he had a cancer scare one time that was devastating to [Vieira] and, of course, to him,” Behar said, “but he never let illness control or define his life…He was a renaissance man, an accomplished writer and a TV producer and a three-time Emmy winner.”

“Richard had a long history with us too,” Behar said, affectionately adding that Cohen even got used to Vieira’s “big mouth at the Hot Topics table, where she spilled the tea about their sex life.”

In his 2005 memoir Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness: A Reluctant Memoir, Cohen, who was legally blind, wrote about being diagnosed in 1973 with MS at age 25. In 1999 and 2000, he overcame two bouts of colon cancer.

Cohen won three Emmy Awards for his work as at CBS News.

He and Vieira married in 1986. She survives him, as do their sons Ben, 36, and Gabe, 34, and daughter Lily, 32.

Kotb and Behar noted that Ben, Gabe and Lily had been staying with Cohen and Vieira since Thanksgiving.

“[They were] concerned they were going to lose him early,” Kotb said. “Instead, they got a glorious month with their dad.”

On Today this morning, Savannah Guthrie said Vieira is “in really good spirits. She was such a beautiful and devoted wife to Richard and he adored Meredith.”