It might sound strange, considering I make my living on television and have been the weatherman and cohost on the Today show for 29 years, but in my personal life, I shy away from the spotlight. I’d much rather celebrate someone else, make a big deal out of their birthday instead of my own.
Which is why I tried my best to dissuade my wife, Deborah Roberts, from throwing a party for my birthday last August. But I knew I couldn’t stop her. It was a milestone birthday, after all—my seventieth.
The truth was, I was feeling a little melancholy about turning 70. My dad never made it to this age. He passed away at 69. Dad was my role model and inspiration for being a good husband and father. I was the oldest of six kids, and three of my siblings were adopted. Mom and Dad brought foster children into our home too. Sometimes people would ask why they’d taken on raising so many children, and Dad would say simply, “There are no limits to how much you can love.”
He was similarly openhearted when it came to expressing his feelings, which wasn’t typical of men of his generation. He would cry and laugh unabashedly, and he hugged and kissed us kids often. We always knew we were loved. Me, I laughed easily, but otherwise, I tended to show my emotions less than Dad did.
It was kind of disconcerting knowing that I would soon surpass how long my dad had been on earth. Especially because I too almost didn’t make it to 70.
The first signs that something was wrong came in the fall of 2022, in early November. I hadn’t been feeling great. Deborah, who’s an ABC News correspondent and coanchor of 20/20, had to go to Europe for an assignment. I kissed her goodbye and told her I’d be fine. Later I walked up the stairs to our bedroom, which is on the top floor of our brownstone, and I got really winded. I looked at my Apple watch, and it said my heart rate was 164. Even with vigorous exercise, it’s gotten to maybe 160, max. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Then I woke up in the middle of the night with severe abdominal pain.
My internist ran scans, which showed I had blood clots in my lungs. Further tests turned up another blood clot, in my leg. My doctor said, “We’ve got to admit you to the hospital.” I called Deborah, who’d just landed in Europe. She turned around and came right back to New York to be at my side.
I was being treated with blood thinners when doctors discovered I was bleeding internally. They had to do a delicate balancing act, giving me enough of the anticoagulants to dissolve the clots while trying to determine what was causing the bleeding.
Two weeks later, we still didn’t have any definitive answers, but things had stabilized enough so that Deborah and I asked if I could go home for Thanksgiving. The answer was yes—the hospital would release me Thanksgiving afternoon, as long as I followed up with my internist the day after.
For the first time in 27 years, I missed hosting the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. That morning, I turned on the TV in my hospital room to channel 4 and watched the parade like everyone else. It felt like a throwback to my childhood because that’s how we used to watch it, on channel 4 here in New York. It was fun to get a whole other sense of the parade and what a great broadcast it really is. It was even better getting to have Thanksgiving dinner at home later with my family.
Everything looked okay at my appointment with my internist the next morning. But that afternoon, I felt faint and had to be rushed by ambulance back to the hospital. It turned out, I was bleeding internally again.
By then I’d had so many tests and scans, and none of them had revealed the cause of the bleeding. The medical team said they needed to do exploratory surgery to pinpoint the problem and fix it. They thought it would take a couple of hours.
My family converged on the hospital: Deborah, of course. My younger daughter, Leila, who’d flown in from Paris, where she lives. My older daughter, Courtney. My brother Chris, who manages a public hospital in the Bronx, and my sister who’s a nurse. Knowing that they would be advocating for me and praying for me allowed me to go into the operating room feeling positive.
The surgery ended up taking almost eight hours. The medical team got in there and found a perforation in my duodenum, the part of the small intestine that connects to the stomach. That tear had been causing the bleeding. They repaired it and resectioned my colon. They took out my gallbladder, which was inflamed. I lost a lot of blood, and for a while, it was touch and go.
I didn’t know the situation was so serious, not then. I didn’t know how close I came to dying. I didn’t know Deborah and the girls were crying in the hallway. While I was in the surgical ICU after the operation, Deborah shielded me from all that. She was the one who talked to the medical team at length, who heard all the frightening details. It was an act of love. And because of it, I was able to put all my energy into recuperating. If I had really known how bad off I was, I’m not sure I could have kept up my positive attitude.
That’s not to say I didn’t have a few “woe is me” moments. In the surgical ICU, they want you to get up and start walking as soon as you can. From your bed to the door and back. Then to the nurses’ station. Every day, you go a little farther. One day, I was making my way slowly—very slowly—down the hall, and I got frustrated that I hadn’t progressed enough to go home and back to the job I love. As I passed other patients’ rooms, it occurred to me that there were folks in this ICU who weren’t able to get up and walk, who didn’t have anybody visiting them. Don’t take your blessings for granted, I reminded myself. Not everyone has so many people showing up for them.
People like my coworkers Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie, who’ve also become my good friends. Hoda came to see me so often, I think folks thought she was a member of the hospital staff. When Savannah visited, she said some lovely prayers for my healing and recovery.
My pastor from St. James Episcopal Church, where my youngest, my son, Nick, served as an acolyte, came a number of days. She brought communion, and we prayed together.
And my kids were there for me, of course. Part of me didn’t like the idea of my children, no matter how grown, seeing me so weak and vulnerable. But I made peace with it when I saw how they each brought their own best self to bolster me.
Leila is fiercely loyal to our family. Like her mom, she ran interference with the medical team and protected me from anything that might have been distressing.
Nick, who was away at college, visited and made me laugh as only he can, with his great sense of humor. He’s serious about his faith, though, and he told me that he and his mom were praying for me.
Courtney is a chef and recipe developer. She promised that when I got home, she would come over on weekends and make nourishing meals to help me rebuild my strength. She had a wonderful surprise for me. “I’m pregnant,” she told me one day at the hospital, her eyes shining. “Our baby’s due next July.”
She and her husband had struggled a bit with infertility, a struggle I was familiar with—Deborah and I did IVF twice to have our kids. It was so gratifying for me to know that the circle of life would continue.
Finally, the day we’d been waiting for came. On December 8, I was released from the hospital. The following Monday morning, I called in to the Today show via video to give an update on my health and to thank viewers for their well wishes and prayers. Then Deborah and I went to a follow-up doctor’s appointment. We’d just gotten home when someone rang the doorbell.
“I wonder who that is?” I said.
I opened the door and couldn’t believe my eyes. There was a crowd filling the sidewalk in front of our house, spilling partway down the block. The entire Today team was here—the anchors, producers, crew and security staff, all of them decked out in Santa hats.
I had never really gotten emotional during the whole medical ordeal and my time in the hospital. I hadn’t cried. But seeing my work family gathered on my doorstep—I totally lost it. I was a lot like my dad in that respect after all.
My coworkers belted out “Jingle Bells,” and I couldn’t resist a little joke. “It’s impressive you did that without a prompter.”
I told everyone that I’d missed them so much and that I was so grateful for all their love and support.
Then they broke into a unique rendition of another holiday classic, “Al Be Home for Christmas.”
That’s when I found myself telling my Today show family something my dad might have said: “I love you all, more than you’ll ever know.”
That moment kicked off something for me. The next few weeks, when I wasn’t resting or doing physical therapy to get my strength back, I wrote notes thanking folks for their prayers and positive thoughts. We got a fair amount of mail from viewers, and I tried to answer everyone.
My health scare reminded me that life is an ephemeral gift that we’ve been given by God, and we need to appreciate and honor it. So I spent a lot of time talking to people too, telling them how I feel about them. The people I care about, the people I love, I want to make sure they know. I’ve been more intentional about that, even after I made a full recovery and returned to the Today show.
In the end, that’s why I realized something: It wasn’t that I couldn’t stop Deborah from doing something big for my seventieth birthday, but that I shouldn’t. The party wasn’t just about celebrating me. It was also about celebrating the people who love me and letting them know how much I love them.
Still, nothing could have prepared me for the surprise party Deborah threw. It was on a Saturday night a week and a half before my actual birthday, so I truly was surprised. She had gathered 150 of my friends and family together at a venue in the city and got an incredible band to play, one of my all-time favorites: Earth, Wind & Fire. It was epic.
I took Deborah in my arms and held her close as we danced. It’s true what my dad said: There are no limits to love. I felt it all around me.
Al’s latest role on the Today show is Chief Motivation Officer of the new Start TODAY app, which has tools, support, daily guided workouts and walks, meal plans and more for a consistent whole-body approach to healthy living. Find out more here.
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