EMOTIONAL REVELATION: Craig Melvin SHARES Private Conversation With Sheinelle Jones That Inspired His Return to TODAY
EMOTIONAL REVELATION: Craig Melvin SHARES Private Conversation With Sheinelle Jones That Inspired His Return to TODAY
Today Show‘s Craig Melvin opened up about an inspiring conversation he had with his co-star Sheinelle Jones before she returned to the NBC morning show.
As fans of the show know, Jones, 47, took a break from Today after her husband, Uche Ojeh, passed away from brain cancer in May at the age of 45. She made her highly anticipated return during the September 5 episode, though Jones remained in contact with her co-anchors during hiatus.
“I said to her a few months ago, I was like, ‘God doesn’t give us more than we can bear. You got this,’” Melvin, 46, told Us Weekly about one memorable conversation with Jones in an interview published on Friday, September 12. “You coming back to work sends a message to all of those folks who watch and listen to us every day that grief is a process, but at the end of the day, you have to put one foot in front of the other, and you have to keep going. People are going to be able to look at you and see someone who is doing just that.”
Melvin went on to note just how much Jones was balancing while also caring for Ojeh amid his illness. “She was like [an] atlas for a year and a half, carrying a family, caregiving for her husband, and up until several months ago, also working,” he explained.
“Our jobs are fairly demanding, and she was doing it and didn’t really think a whole lot of it at the time until it was all over,” Melvin continued. “So, yeah, I just had this conversation about an hour or two ago. I sat next to her longer than anyone else in my career. I mean, we co-hosted Weekend Today together and then the 3rd Hour, and I sat next to her in some capacity for more than a decade.”
During her return on the September 5 episode, Jones spoke to Savannah Guthrie about her grieving process following her husband’s d3ath.
“It just felt like we always kind of had it,” she explained of their marriage. “And when he was dying, I would say, ‘This sucks, and this is scary, but if you ask me if this was going to be my fate, I would do it all over again.’”
She added that people “don’t move on” from tragedies, but instead “move forward with our loved ones.” Jones continued, “I hope that just by me being on the set and me returning to work, it’s like, ‘OK, if I can do it, so can you, right?’”
