Al Roker’s “Today” show co-anchors celebrated his homecoming Friday after his recent hospitalization for blood clots.
The veteran weatherman, who returned home Thursday, got an on-air shoutout from Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb during Friday’s NBC broadcast. Fellow hosts Carson Daly, Sheinelle Jones and Dylan Dreyer joined them to toast his discharge after multiple hospitalizations in recent weeks.
“We’ve been waiting to say this,” Kotb said, sharing the “great, great news” about Roker.
“By the way, we’re playing his song,” Guthrie added as the theme to the 1980s TV series “The A-Team” played. Guthrie said the “Today” team hears it coming from his office “every morning.”
“So we’re playing it for you, Al, this morning. Yes, turn it up!” Guthrie said.
Roker, 68, happily posted about his return home Thursday, sharing photos with his family on Instagram.
“Home! So incredibly grateful to family, friends, medical folks, @todayshow family and all your thoughts and prayers,” he wrote.
Last Thursday, Roker said he was back in the hospital “due to some complications” after experiencing a blood clot scare last month. The announcement came shortly after the morning TV star missed this year’s tree-lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center. He also missed hosting the Nov. 24 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for the first time in nearly three decades after being hospitalized for blood clots in his leg and lungs. (Meteorologist Dreyer filled in for him.)
On Friday’s show, Daly said he had been texting with Roker after noticing Kotb was taking over the weatherman’s office.
“I sent him a picture yesterday. I walked by his office here. And I wrote him a text. I said, ‘Al, you gotta come back because this is turning into Hoda’s third closet.’ Because there are racks of clothes in there,” he joked.
Kotb laughed it off and said that Roker also sent her Daly’s picture and said something along the lines of, “Oh, my work wife is now taking over my closet.”
“I love that he is joking in texts,” Dreyer added.
Guthrie said it’s been “a long road” for Roker but assured audiences that he’ll “be back soon.” She also noted that viewers and fans who line up outside 30 Rockefeller Plaza each morning had been asking about him.
“We have so many signs, like, ‘We miss you, Al,’ ‘We love you, Al’” Guthrie said. “We feel the same and he’ll be back soon. We want him to take his time and feel good, which he will. But we love him and he’ll be back soon.”
Roker, who has served as “Today’s” weather presenter since 1996, has been open about his health struggles in the past, sharing in 2020 that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
