Today anchor Meredith Vieira's husband Richard Cohen dies age 76 after decades-long multiple sclerosis battle

Former Today anchor Meredith Vieira's husband Richard Cohen has died at age 76, after overcoming cancer twice and battling multiple sclerosis for over five decades.

The Today show shared the news on Tuesday morning that he had passed away on Christmas Eve following a battle with pneumonia.

Hoda Kotb said on the show that he was 'surrounded by his family and love' when he died. 

She added that the family have been staying together since Thanksgiving.

'[They were] concerned they were going to lose him early. Instead, they got a glorious month with their dad,' she added. 

Savannah Guthrie also gave some insight into how Meredith is doing.

'She's in really good spirits,' she said. 'She was such a beautiful and devoted wife to Richard and he adored Meredith. 

'And hanging out with them, they were like the most fun and entertaining, irreverent, cool couple you could hang out with.'

Richard was an acclaimed journalist, TV producer, and author who previously served as a senior producer on CNN and CBS News.

He also wrote columns for the Health and Fitness section of the New York Times. 

The couple wed in 1986 and welcomed three kids together, sons Ben, 36, and Gabe, 34, and daughter Lily, 32.

Richard was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when he was 25 years old.

'I dropped a coffeepot for no reason. I fell off a curb for no reason. I noticed a little numbness in my leg,' he previously told Yahoo Life about how he realized he had the disease. 

'It hit my eyesight fairly quickly, but other than that, I was very active physically and I thought I was really beating it. I was living in denial.'

Richard also battled colon cancer twice - first in 1999 and again in 2000 - and was legally blind.

He wrote an autobiography on living with blindness in 2004, entitled, Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness: A Reluctant Memoir.

Meredith is best known for being a co-host on the Today show from 2006 until 2011.

She also was one of the original moderators and co-hosts on The View and hosted Who Wants to Be a Millionaire for 11 seasons from 2002 until 2013. 

She launched her own talk show, called The Meredith Vieira Show, in 2014 and it went on for two seasons.

She is now the host of the Fox game series 25 Words or Less.