Sheinelle Jones defends keeping late husband Uche Ojeh’s cancer private on ‘Today’ show

Sheinelle Jones kept her late husband Uche Ojeh’s brain cancer battle private from “Today” show viewers for more than a year at his request.

The journalist defended her secrecy while returning to work on Friday for the first time since her partner’s passing in May.

The NBC personality, notably, told Savannah Guthrie in a pre-taped sitdown that Ojeh was diagnosed “a few weeks before” she ran the New York City Marathon in November 2023.

“I know people will say, ‘What?’” Jones quipped with an exaggerated gasp. “But I ran the marathon with that on my shoulders.”

The news anchor took a leave from work in December 2024, revealing the following month that her absence was due to a “family health matter.”

News broke of Ojeh’s death at age 45 in May.

“There may be some people who are watching and they say, ‘Why didn’t you share? Why did she hold this for so long?’” Jones acknowledged on Friday. “What I will tell you is that Uche was fiercely private.

“I chose the spotlight but he did not,” she continued. “He was not on Instagram. He wasn’t on Facebook. And when he got this diagnosis, he asked me, ‘Please, I want to handle this privately.’”

Jones noted that Ojeh had been “so protective” of her and their three kids — Kayan, 16, and twins Clara and Uche, 13 — over the years, making it her “turn to be protective” and “loyal” too.

“We honored [his reqiest],” she said. “That is why now I feel comfortable talking.”

Jones expressed displeasure over those who knew the truth along the way and told her, “You’re doing such a good job at faking it.”

This “really bothered” the widow, and she clapped back on Friday.

“I was not faking it,” she insisted to viewers. “My joy is real. I was on television for almost a year with this. I would do the show, hop in the car and go be with him during chemo. My joy was real, and I think two things can be true.”

Jones, who married Ojeh in September 2007, went on to explain why she took her leave of absence when she did.

“I didn’t want to miss it,” she recalled of the “beautiful nightmare” experience. “I wanted to be strong and look back and know that I was strong, but I didn’t want to be so strong that I missed this blessing right in front of me, that I missed the fight, that I missed the beauty in the fight, just looking in his eyes.”

While tearfully breaking her silence on Ojeh’s “horrible” death, Jones said she would repeat their love story “all over again” despite knowing the ending.

Although her “heart still hurts,” she has found “beauty in the nightmare.”

Jones thanked Guthrie and the rest of her colleagues for being her “oxygen” during both the tragedy and her return to TV screens.

She told fans, “If you see me now … laughing, having a good time, you root for me. Because I am fighting for my joy.”