In her career on the Today show, Meredith Vieira flew to Beijing to cover the Olympics, watched Duchess Catherine sparkle on her wedding day and kicked her heels up with the Rockettes.
But now, nearly two months after saying goodbye to her job as co-anchor of the morning show for the past 5 years, Vieira reveals her husband wasn’t so sure she’d be up for the next challenge – spending time at home.
He teased, “‘Now you’re going to see what it’s like to be home with a crazy dog that barks all the time, things breaking here and there, and there’s always a workman doing something,'” Vieira, 57, tells Good Housekeeping magazine in its September issue. “He said, ‘You’re going to be a part of the rhythm of my life.'”
She continues: “There’s a dance to relationships, and we had been doing a little bit of the dancing side by side, but not together. Now, we’re back together, and we’ve got to figure out the rhythm of that dance.”
Vieira, once again, clarifies that she left her job to spend more time with her husband, journalist Richard Cohen, who has secondary-progressive multiple sclerosis – but not solely to take care of him.
“Family and health factored into my decision, but it’s not like Richard is … taking some turn for the worst,” she says of her husband, who is also cancer-free now after two bouts with colon cancer. “I was more leaving because he’s healthy. So why not while we are able to enjoy life?”
She admits, “Every year, it’s a little bit worse. On the other hand, he’s doing great compared to a lot of people. And he’s certainly self-sufficient. I mean, the idea that I’m nursing him is ridiculous.”
Her children also factored into the decision, she says. Two of her children are about to graduate – Ben, 22, from college and Lily, 18, from high school – and she knew this would be “the last summer for a while” that her brood were all home (she’s also mom to Gabe, 19).
And when it came time to make her final decision, she says, “I knew for a while that I was leaning [toward leaving]. My gut was telling me that it was time to go.”
