Al Roker was back in action on “Today” on Tuesday, returning to the NBC morning show for the first time since undergoing a “complicated” knee surgery on May 9.
“Look who’s here!” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie told viewers at the start of Tuesday’s broadcast. “Mr. Roker, we are so happy to have you back in our studio. You’ve got a brand new knee.”
Roker joked he had a “new wheel” and was “putting it to use.”
Guthrie also asked her colleague if the joint still has “that new knee smell.”
“You don’t want to go there,” Roker quipped. “But no, it’s all good. All good.”
As he recuperated, Roker called into “Today” on May 15 to give fans an update on his latest knee surgery, saying that he had a few months of physical rehab ahead of him.
“This one is a little more complicated because it’s what they call a revision,” the 68-year-old said. “It was a replacement of a replacement, so they had to take stuff out [and] put new stuff in, so it was a bit of a bear.”
ABC News correspondent Deborah Roberts, Roker’s wife of 27 years, discussed the weatherman’s surgery in a May 21 Instagram Live video. “Thank you all so much for being so concerned about him and so interested in his well-being,” she said, per People.
“As many of you know, he had a knee re-replacement, so a knee that had been replaced many, many years ago had problems and had to be re-replaced. It makes it slow going. It makes it a little tougher. It was a harder surgery, so it’s a little bit harder to snap back from but he’s doing pretty well, moving a little slowly.”
Roberts, who also helped Roker through his blood clot ordeal this winter, thanked fans for being “so kind and so generous and just so caring and compassionate about my family over these last several months as we’ve gone through a few things.”