Alex Trebek and his wife of nearly three decades, Jean, are opening up about his battle with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. In a new upcoming special with Good Morning America‘s Michael Strahan, the couple got candid about Trebek’s diagnosis, with Jean in particular revealing how the ordeal has affected her.
When asked about the most difficult part of the longtime Jeopardy! host’s cancer battle, Jean said it was feeling helpless. “When I see him in pain and I can’t help him,” Jean said, as reported by Entertainment Tonight. “When he doesn’t eat right.”
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“When he has too much diet soda,” she added in a more lighthearted tone.
Trebek and Jean, who have been married for 29 years, share two children together: daughter, Emily and son, Matthew. Trebek was previously married to businesswoman Elaine Callei for seven years.
Jean admitted that she sometimes does want her husband to take a break from hosting Jeopardy!, but she knows he loves it and that it gives him a sense of purpose. Trebek acknowledged that the diagnosis has been tough on Jean.
“It’s always tough for caretakers because she has to deal with her worrying about my well-being and also dealing with … I’m not the most pleasant person to be around when I’m experiencing severe pain or depression, and she has to tread lightly around me,” he said.
Trebek also touched on the moment from November that spread like wildfire on the internet when he fought back tears on the air after Jeopardy! contestant Dhruv Gaur answered his Final Jeopardy question with “‘What is… We [love] you, Alex!’”
“I read it first and then I got choked up because it suddenly registered on me: ‘Oh dear. OK. Yeah,’” Trebek told Strahan. “I don’t mind getting choked up. My oncologist told me one of the symptoms, if you will, of pancreatic cancer is that you get these moments of depression, sadness.”
But the countless well wishes from around the world have helped to raise his spirits at time throughout his diagnosis. “Most of us have open-ended lives, we don’t know when we’re going to die,” he said. “Because of the cancer diagnosis, it’s no longer an open-ended life, it’s a closed-end life.”
“Because of that, and something else that is operating here, people all over America and abroad have decided they want to let me know now, while I’m alive, about the impact I’ve been having on their existence. They have come out and they have told me, and, my gosh, it makes me feel so good.”
The one-hour special, What Is Jeopardy? Alex Trebek and America’s Most Popular Quiz Show airs Thursday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
Photo credit: ADRIAN SANCHEZ-GONZALEZ / Stringer / Getty
