NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- “Today” show meteorologist Al Roker announced Friday that he has prostate cancer.
Roker, 66, said the cancer was caught early and that he’ll undergo surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City next week to have his prostate removed.
"It's a good news-bad news kind of thing," Roker said on-air. "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 said he hoped to return to the show in "about two weeks."
"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," said Dr. Vincent Laudone, who will perform the surgery.
Roker said he went public with his diagnosis to draw attention to the number of men, particularly African-American men, who are diagnosed with the disease in their lifetime.
"One in nine men are going to be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, but for African-American men that number is one in seven and is more deadly," Roker said. "If you detect it early, this is a really treatable disease and it's why I wanted to take you along my journey, so we can all learn together how to educate and protect the men in our lives."