The 66-year-old television personality announced on the show Friday that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in September.
Roker learned after a routine checkup that he had elevated levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in his blood. He then had an MRI and a biopsy, which confirmed his diagnosis.
“It’s a good news-bad news kind of thing. Good news is we caught it early. Not great news is that it’s a little aggressive, so I’m going to be taking some time off to take care of this,” Roker said.
Roker will have surgery to remove his prostate next week in New York.
“We’ll just wait and see, and hopefully in about two weeks, I’ll be back [on ‘Today’],” he said.
Roker said he went public about his diagnosis to urge others to get regular checkups, particularly Black men.
“The problem for African Americans is that any number of reasons from genetics to access to health care, and so we want to make it available and let people know they got to get checked,” he said.
Roker and his “Today” co-host Craig Melvin previously teamed up with the New Jersey Devils hockey team to create a PSA about getting checked for prostate cancer.
