Sheinelle Jones Reveals How Holiday Traditions Have Changed as Her Kids Grow Up
Sheinelle Jones is getting used to playing Santa to three big elves.
The Today host—mom to kids Kayin, 17, as well as twins Clara and Uche, 14, with her late husband Uche Ojeh—admitted her brood’s idea of a merry Christmas has changed as they’ve gotten older.
“I have three teenagers now, so the holidays look a lot different,” Jones exclusively told E! News at the Ebony Power 100 Gala Nov. 9. “In the early days, they would be waiting downstairs at 5, 6 a.m. Now, everybody kind of sleeps in. It’s weird!”
That said, Jones—who was being honored for her impact as a Black journalist at the magazine’s annual ceremony—also joked that Saint Nick himself was feeling the growing pains with her trio.
“It used to be they would write a list to Santa and just hope,” the 48-year-old recalled with a laugh. “Now, they’re creating spreadsheets and slideshows. I’m like, ‘What is happening?'”
And as Jones explained how her children’s increasingly sophisticated taste has led to curating wish lists complete with links, she quipped, “You’re supposed to do some cookies and a notebook, a sheet of paper and a pencil—not a spreadsheet.”
But even as the family faces major shifts, including Ojeh’s 2025 death following a battle with an aggressive brain cancer, some traditions have stayed the same.
Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
“My husband’s father is a minister, and so we usually are with my husband’s side of the family every year,” she shared. “We eat a lot. We have a lot of church services and fellowships.”
Still, amid celebrating the busy season with her loved ones, the author manages to carve out time for herself.
“When the kids are with their cousins, I can go for a run and have some quiet time,” she noted. “So, I love the holidays.”
Photo by: Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images
Aside from the holidays, Jones considers working with her fellow Today co-anchors Jenna Bush Hager, Al Roker and Carson Daly a “magical and amazing” part of her life year-round.
In her words, “They’re my family, and I think that people see that.”
For more about Jones and her life on and off TV, keep reading…
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Who Is Sheinelle Jones?
Born in Philadelphia, Sheinelle Jones can track her love of words and storytelling back to her childhood in Wichita, Kan. “I grew up surrounded by the power of intentionality,” she explained in a 2024 interview with her alma mater’s Northwestern Magazine of mom Sheila Kinnard‘s habit of leaving affirmations all around their home. “There were quotes in my bathroom when I was in eighth grade, [like] ‘If you can see it, you can be it.'”
So she saw, and she did. A high school cheerleader, clarinetist and student council member, Jones covered her bedroom walls with photos of Janet Jackson and news anchors, including local KWCH 12 legend Cindy Klose.
Determined to be a news reporter, Jones scored an internship at a nearby CBS affiliate through her grandmother’s friend from church.
From there, surrounded by motivational quotes, she explained when speaking at the 2018 convocation for Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, “I visualized myself in a black-and-white glossy headshot right along with those anchors on my wall until, essentially, it became my reality.”
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When Did Sheinelle Jones Join Today?
On her grind from the moment she stepped onto Northwestern’s Chicago-area campus, Jones interned at an NBC affiliate in Wichita, then cold-called BET Networks until they agreed to give her an unpaid summer internship. (She slept on her older sister’s couch in Washington, D.C., working at clothing store Rainbow to make money.)
Armed with the knowledge from her journalism courses, Spanish studies and articulation classes, Jones worked at an NBC affiliate in Springfield, Ill. and then a job as an evening news anchor and reporter at a Fox station in Tulsa, Okla.
Next came a nine-year stint at Fox’s Emmy-winning Good Day Philadelphia before Jones—one of five children born to Kinnard and U.S. District Court Judge C. Darnell Jones II—joined Weekend Today in 2014, becoming co-host of Today‘s third hour in 2019 before claiming the seat next to Jenna Bush Hager on the newly minted Today with Jenna & Sheinelle.
Photo by: Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images
Why Did Sheinelle Jones Take a Leave of Absence from Today?
Quietly stepping away from the desk she shared with cohosts Craig Melvin and Savannah Guthrie in December 2024, the mom to Kayin and twins Clara and Uche addressed her absence in a January 2025 Instagram post.
“I’m taking time to deal with a family health matter,” Jones wrote. “It’s not lost on [me] how lucky I am to have not only the support of my Today Show family, but to also have all of you. Your kindness means so much to me.”
But it wasn’t until that May when viewers got a full understanding of the battle Jones had been facing. With “profound sadness,” Guthrie announced that Jones’ husband of 17 years, Uche Ojeh, had “passed away after a courageous battle with an aggressive form of brain cancer called glioblastoma.”
As Jones now works through her profound grief, she’s used it to teach her children not to be scared of expressing emotions. “What I’ve told my kids, it’s almost like rain can’t last forever,” she explained when returning to Today in September 2025. “So when the rain comes, in some ways, I’ve just learned to look up at the rain and let it clear the air. I don’t run away from crying anymore. When it comes to grief, I see it as, ‘Here comes my cleansing rain.’ And it’s OK. So when it comes now, I’m like, ‘OK, you can come. We can sit for a little bit.'”
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Who Was Sheinelle Jones’ Husband?
The same ingenuity that guided Jones’ career had her thinking fast when she first spied her future husband. “I was a fake tour guide,” she recounted to Northwestern Magazine of leading the then-high school senior through the lakeside campus. Though she was en route to class, “I told him I would take him around because he was cute.”
From there, they mapped out a decades-long journey. After eight years of dating and two false starts (she previously thought he was proposing when he gifted her a Tiffany’s box with a bracelet inside and then again on a trip to Cancun), the couple found themselves back at the beginning.
“We were on a trip to Northwestern’s campus,” Jones recounted on Today in 2018. “It was raining outside, and he was like, ‘Let’s go over by our little spot on the lake.'” Though she was hesitant to get wet, he convinced her to let the rain fall down, then dropped to one knee.
She and the Nigerian-born consultant—a managing partner at UAO Consulting and an avid triathlete—wed in her native Philadelphia in September 2007, going on to welcome son Kayin in August 2009 and twins Clara and Uche in July 2012.
“With all three of my children, I try to show them that they’re ALL a team,” she’s told Today, “and they have to take care of each other.”
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What has Sheinelle Jones said about working with Jenna Bush Hager?
In her third week back at Today, Jones took her first spin in the Jenna & Friends chair. Hager surprised her longtime friend with what she dubbed “The Secret Society of Sheinelle”—six of the journalist’s closest friends that she said “put me back together.”
One of 60 guests who sat beside Hager in the year since Hoda Kotb signed off, Jones told Hager, “Hopefully this will be a date where you walk away and go, ‘OK, hopefully she calls me tomorrow!'”
Reader, she did.
Before making her Dec. 8 debut, Jones slipped into one of her husband’s old shirts and celebrated with their three kids. “I said a little prayer,” Jones recounted, “and I’m like, ‘Let’s go be with not my friend, but my sister.'” Agreed Hager, “There’s nobody I would rather sit next to.”
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