Sheinelle Jones is still adjusting to life without her husband of 17 years.

“I don’t even think I understood fully what it would feel like to not have him,” Jones, 47, tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story, noting it’s the small things, like not being able to text him when she boards a plane, that hit her the hardest. “It’s the life after where you really feel the loss.”

In May, the Today broadcaster faced the unimaginable when her husband, Uche Ojeh, died of glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. Ojeh — her college sweetheart, a lifelong athlete and father to their three children, son Kayin, 16, and twins Clara and Uche Jr, both 13 — was just 45.

“My kids lost their dad at 13 and 16,” says Jones, “but I try to tell them they got more in those years than some people get in a lifetime.”

Now, Jones is embarking on a new adventure — her first “win,” she says, without Ojeh physically by her side. Together with Jenna Bush Hager, Jones launched Today with Jenna & Sheinelle on Jan. 12, marking a new era for the show’s fourth hour — which Bush Hager helmed alongside some 60 “friends” for the better part of the last year after Hoda Kotb’s departure in January 2025.

“People see me on TV and they think ‘Oh, she’s better.’ It’s like, ‘Oh, no no. I’m not better.’ Every day, it’s like swimming through mud,” says Jones, who returned to the network in September after a leave of absence that began in late 2024. “I’ve had to really do the work. Empathy is my superpower now, and I recognize that I hold two things: I hold my grief, and I also hold this joy. I said it months ago, and I’ll say it now: I am fighting for my joy.”

Having her dream job has become a cornerstone of that joy. “Jenna and I look at each other and we’re safe. If I fall, she’s going to pick me up and vice versa,” says Jones. “If I told you the depth of my groans and tears just months ago to one of the best days of my life here today, you couldn’t even write it.”

“I’m witnessing Sheinelle do this so effortlessly, and I know it’s not. I know it’s actually really hard, but she’s doing it,” says Bush Hager. “And she’s really such a reminder to all of us that joy and heartbreak can be held at the same time and that we have to find moments of joy and celebration even in darkness.”

Jones also found strength in the power of prayer. She always believed Ojeh would live, she says.

“Not once did I think I was going to lose him,” she says. “When you’re a woman of faith, you realize that you’re praying for an outcome and then if the outcome doesn’t come, then what? And that’s when I’ve really had to dig deep and realize that maybe I just don’t fully understand. I know God loves me and I know God loves [Uche] and I know God loves my children and our families, so like, why is this happening? I still don’t know if I have the answer, but I have peace that passes all understanding. That’s a Bible verse. It doesn’t mean that it’s easier. It doesn’t mean that my grief is not excruciating.”

Jones, who had been a permanent fixture on the 3rd Hour of Today since 2019, worked for a year after Ojeh’s diagnosis. Her third hour co-anchors, Al Roker, Craig Melvin and Dylan Dreyer, all rallied around their friend while she fought alongside her husband for 18 months.

Roker delivered breakfast sandwiches to hospice and Melvin visited Ojeh often. Savannah Guthrie and Kotb brought gift baskets and devotional books to the hospital. And it was Dreyer who slipped into Jones’ dressing room one morning in December 2024 to gently encourage her exhausted friend to step away from work and be with her family.

Now, nine months after her husband’s death, Jones says she senses him everywhere: in yellow butterflies, in sunflowers, in his tie that she gave to their son before his recent Model Congress event.

“And I know that he knows,” she says of her new gig on Today with Jenna & Sheinelle. “He was rooting for me all along. I owe it to him to keep going.”

As for their three children, Jones wants them to carry their father’s legacy “not with pain, but with power,” she says. “It hurts that this [loss] is happening to me, but it is excruciating that it’s happening to my kids. As a mom you just want to protect them from everything. This was the first thing I couldn’t fix.”

Still, she rises — or sits, rather, in the front row of her daughter’s recital and next to her son on the plane to soccer camp. “When my kids and I look back, what mother do I want them to see? Who is the woman I want to be? It’s like, ‘Okay, she’d do it. So let’s go.’ Being a single mom is really hard, but I’m proud of my kids for how we’re managing,” Jones says.

“When I hear my kids laugh, I know they’re going to be okay. There’s joy there,” she adds. “And for me, going back to work, with all of those people surrounding me, I feel safe and loved, and I don’t have to pretend. My joy is real.”