How did Meredith Vieira’s husband Richard Cohen die?

Born on Dec. 30, 1953, in Providence, Rhode Island, Meredith Vieira is a 71-year-old broadcast journalist and television personality best known for being the original moderator on the popular daytime talk show The View, the original host of the daytime version of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and a co-host of the morning news show Today.

Per IMDb, Vieira has also hosted the game show 25 Words or Less, the biographical documentary series Intimate Portrait, contributed to magazine reality legal show Dateline NBC, news shows Rock Center with Brian Williams and NBC Nightly News, and hosted a talk show of her own, The Meredith Vieira Show.

Vieira married the journalist, television producer, and author Richard Cohen (born Feb. 14, 1948, in Plainview, New York) in 1986. While Cohen was always the lesser-known name in the marriage, he was a highly accomplished man in his own right. He worked as a senior producer for CBS News and CNN, often wrote columns for The New York Times’ “Health and Fitness” section, and wrote several books, including Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness: A Reluctant Memoir (2004), Strong At The Broken Places (2008), and I Want to Kill the Dog (2012). Vieira and Cohen had three children: Gabriel, Lily, and Benjamin Cohen. Gabriel is a Washington-based reporter for CNN.

Tragically, on Christmas Eve in 2024, Cohen passed away. He was 76. But what happened?

How did Richard Cohen die?

The Hudson Independent was the first outlet to report Richard Cohen’s passing, saying he died at 11:30 am on Dec. 24, 2024, af­ter bat­tling pneu­mo­nia for two months. A video posted at ET Online says his family, including his children and newborn grandchild, arrived around Thanksgiving, believing his passing was imminent. They view getting to spend an extra month with him as a blessing.

Cohen had endured and bravely battled with a plethora of health issues throughout his life. When he was 25, he was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis (MS) at a time when treatment for the condition didn’t exist. He had to get on with his life — Cohen earned his Mas­ters in Jour­nal­ism at Co­lum­bia, study­ing un­der the renowned Fred Friendly, and carved out an amaz­ing ca­reer in the media, despite his condition ultimately rendering him legally blind — and was constantly in and out of the hospital as flare-ups regularly occurred. He told his future wife about his condition on their second date.

Cohen lived with MS for over 50 years, and it was undoubtedly a factor in the pneumonia that ended his life. He had also survived two bouts of colon cancer, one in 1999 and a second in 2000 (per a now-archived page on The Ladies’ Home Journal).

His bravery in battling his ailments was equally evident in his work, as he cov­ered dangerous situations like the rise of the Sol­i­dar­ity trade union move­ment in Poland and wars in the Mid­dle East and Cen­tral Amer­ica, occasionally ending up with guns pointed at him. We send our condolences to Meredith Vieira, the rest of Cohen’s family, and everyone close to him. May he rest in eternal peace.