Longtime "Today" weatherman Al Roker told viewers Friday he is undergoing surgery for prostate cancer.
Roker, 66, said he is having his prostate removed next week at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and will take time off from the NBC News morning franchise.
"It's a good news-bad news kind of thing," Roker said. "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 has been a fixture on "Today" since 1996. His 24-year run is the longest of any personality in the history of the program, which began in 1952.
Roker said he went public with his diagnosis to raise awareness of the high incidence of prostate cancer among Black men. Dr. Carol Brown, a cancer surgeon at Sloan Kettering, noted on "Today" that 1 in 7 Black men will be diagnosed with the disease in their lifetime and are twice as likely to die of it as white men.
