Al Roker announces he's been diagnosed with "aggressive" prostate cancer

The Today Show

"It's a good news-bad news kind of thing," the 66-year-old Today host and weather forecaster said on this morning's show. "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 will undergo surgery next week at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. "We'll just wait and see, and hopefully in about two weeks, I'll be back (on TODAY)," Roker said. Dr. Vincent Laudone, who will perform the procedure, told Today: "Fortunately his cancer appears somewhat limited or confined to the prostate, but because it's more aggressive, we wanted to treat it, and after discussion regarding all of the different options — surgery, radiation, focal therapy — we settled on removing the prostate." Roker said he hoped sharing his journey will encourage other African-American men to get checked.