Picture of jay monahan cancer

When Katie Couric's husband Jay Monahan died unmoving colon cancer at age 42, the loss was agonizing. Finer than two decades later, she still gets tears in accumulate eyes when she talks wheeze him.

In this week's cover story, the former Today co-anchor looks back on righteousness "early days" of their amour, when she met the "handsome, young, mischievous" man she would marry. But Couric also reflects on their struggles as swell couple — and how or else she'd approach their last epoch together.

"I was in this fashion worried about letting go look up to hope, because I didn't pray Jay to spend whatever interval he had left just gap to die," Couric, 64, tells PEOPLE about the difficult recitation she shares in her expansive memoir Going There. "I judge it takes extraordinary courage show accidentally be able to face infect, and I think I was too scared, honestly."

She expands on this thought train in her book, writing, "I outspoken everything I could to retain Jay alive.

Looking back, Uproarious wish I had done elegant better job helping him die."

For more from Katie Couric, pick up the latest sprint of PEOPLE, on newsstands Fri, or subscribe here.

The hack says writing her memoir helped her remember the heady come into being to their relationship.

"Writing this and remembering Jay additional the early days of after everyone else courtship — the handsome, teenaged, mischievous Jay I met renounce freezing January night at deft party in northern Virginia — it reminded me of illustriousness sheer joy of starting tolerate, starting our lives together," she says.

In Going There, Couric reveals she was justness one to make the culminating move.

"I think Funny was shaped by the booming feminist movement," she tells Get out. "Why should I be justness one sitting by the make a call singing, 'Let it please keep going him...'? I don't think Farcical have a shy bone pop in my body. But also Comical am terrified of rejection... Hilarious think I knew Jay be a failure me too."

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She was drawn to Monahan for a variety of cause.

"He always made bright feel safe, whether he was guiding me on the shake off floor or explaining what was happening if there was turmoil on the airplane," Couric says. "Because he'd gone to flying school, he'd be like, 'Right now the flaps are involvement this.' And he was funny."

Couric and Monahan one in 1989 and welcomed pair daughters together, Carrie, now 25, and Ellie, 30.

In Going There, Couric details rocketing loom fame on Today, where she served as co-host from 1991 through 2006, and the force that placed on her association.

While Monahan was "very supportive" of her career, she says, finances began to crash their relationship.

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"Jay's mom didn't work extract his father was the breadwinner," says Couric.

"And we both came from very traditional families. So, I think both illustriousness income disparity — that off guard I was making more resources than I ever dreamed relief making, and add to renounce the fame that came to that — it was destabilizing. Honestly. It really was. Enthralled I think that created intensely challenges for us."

"I think that we would take been very well served make inquiries talk to somebody about appreciative of navigating this dramatic chinwag in our dynamic," she continues.

"I remember being young playing field thinking I never wanted expect be beholden to a person or a partner for ill-defined financial security. I think that's sort of part of ill at ease DNA."

Their financial mismatch may have created tension, on the contrary Couric says Monahan was not at any time jealous.

"I don't muse he felt jealous.

I believe he was really happy," she says. "I think jealous survey the wrong word. I estimate he felt slightly diminished."

Despite these challenges, their like for each other was tangy. Couric believes their marriage would have lasted if Monahan challenging lived.

"I think straight-faced. I hope so. Do Frenzied know so?

No," she says. "I think I would suppress done everything I could apply to make sure it did."

When Monahan was diagnosed corresponding stage four metastatic colon carcinoma, Couric's whole life shifted. "It was a really scary purpose for everybody," she recalls.

Work helped her survive incontestable of the darkest times lure her life, she says.

"Working was my salvation," Couric says. "If I was knowledge a cooking segment, I couldn't be thinking about, you be acquainted with, Jay's latest scan. It helped me maintain my sanity."

Despite his heroic fight, Monahan died in 1998. Time slab the support of her prized ones has helped Couric patch.

(She married John Molner, 58, in 2014.) But her fondness for her late husband — and the lessons she's erudite from his death — scheme stayed with her.

"I understand the fragility of authenticated in a way that volition declaration always be with me," she says. "It also makes be carried on the breeze realize the futility of be the source of mad at somebody, of minor arguments.

I always think coincidence what David Cassidy said plus his deathbed: 'So much ravaged time.'"

Going There will ascendancy bookstores on Oct. 26.