Meredith Vieira's Husband Richard Cohen Discusses Life with Multiple Sclerosis

In recent years, Cohen has become legally blind and he has reached a point where he has to use a cane because he has trouble walking. In 2004, he went on Larry King Live and described his blindness as an “impressionist painting”. “You go 20 feet away and it all fades away and blurs and becomes very fuzzy in the distance,” he said. When King asked how he could be a TV producer while being legally blind, Cohen explained – “Well, legal blindness is different from blindness, and television, as you know, is a collaborative medium. And I just had good people with me — camera crews, correspondents — and I really relied on the vision of other people to sort of fill in what I could not see clearly, myself.” During the same interview, Cohen described MS as being a constant companion. “It’s just built into life, and, you know, it just is something you endure, something that you — at least I decided early on, and Meredith decided early on, it was not going to deter us from having a normal life, raising three kids, and going forth,” he said.