Uche Ojeh, the husband of Today co-host Sheinelle Jones, has passed away at the age of 45 following a battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
The “heartbreaking” announcement was made with “profound sadness” by Jones’ Today co-hosts—Savannah Guthrie, Craig Melvin, Al Roker, Carson Daly, Dylan Dreyer, and Jenna Bush Hager—during the NBC morning show’s live broadcast on Friday, May 23, according to PEOPLE.
Ojeh, whose full name was Uchechukwuka Adenola Ojeh, was married to Jones for 18 years. The couple shared three children: 15-year-old son Kayin, and 12-year-old fraternal twins Clara and Uche.
“There are no words for the pain that we feel for Sheinelle and their three young children,” said Guthrie. “Uche was an incredible person. We all loved him. … We just want to say Sheinelle, Kayin, Uche and Clara and the Ojeh family: we are with you, we love you. You are our family and we’re just sending all of our love to you right now.”
“He loved those kids more than anything else in this world, and was just so proud,” Melvin said, he is personal friends with Ojeh. “He was that dad that was on the sideline of every soccer game. He was at all of the concerts and the recitals. He was that guy.”
Sheinelle Jones, 47, has been away from the Today show since mid-December. A member of the network since 2014, Jones has been a familiar face across various Today segments, most notably as a co-host of the 3rd Hour of Today alongside Al Roker, Craig Melvin, and Dylan Dreyer.
On January 15, Jones took to Instagram to explain her absence, sharing that she was taking time off to attend to a family health matter.
Uche Ojeh was born on February 4, 1980. He met Sheinelle Jones in the late 1990s at Northwestern University when she, a freshman at the time, gave him—then a high school senior visiting the campus—a tour. That chance meeting marked the beginning of a lasting connection.
Ojeh went on to graduate from Northwestern in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a concentration in economics. His professional career included consulting roles at IBM and Accenture before he became a managing partner at UAO Consulting in 2008, a position he held until his passing, according to PEOPLE.
After maintaining a long-distance relationship for eight years, Ojeh proposed to Jones on the very campus where their story began—during a rainstorm, adding a romantic flourish to the moment.
The couple were married on September 2, 2007, in Jones’ hometown of Philadelphia. They welcomed their first child, a son named Kayin, in August 2009. Their family grew again in July 2012 with the arrival of fraternal twins, Clara and Uche.
Sheinelle Jones is an American journalist and television personality, best known as a co-host of NBC’s Today show. Born on April 19, 1978, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she graduated from Northwestern University and began her broadcasting career at WICS in Springfield, Illinois. Jones later worked at KOKI-TV in Tulsa and WTXF-TV in Philadelphia before joining Today in 2014. She co-hosts the 3rd Hour of Today and hosts NBC’s educational series Wild Child.
