This Mom and Son's Post Quarantine Reunion Made the "Today" Hosts Cry

From Oprah Magazine

• Janis Mackey Frayer, a Beijing-based NBC News correspondent, just reunited with her son after 49 days.

• Frayer's video of her first hug with her son had Today hosts Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb, and Al Roker tearing up.

This video of a reunion between reporter Janis Mackey Frayer and her 6-year-old son—reunited after 49 days quarantined apart—will probably make you emotional. It certainly had Today host Savannah Guthrie crying.

The Canadian journalist, who's been covering the coronavirus pandemic in Beijing, China for NBC News, was separated from her son for over a month and a half. Frayer and her only child rushed into each other's arms the minute they saw each other in person.

"My husband and I captured it on video so we could show him someday," Frayer said in a Today show report on her experience. "And explain how our family, like so many around the world, has navigated this pandemic."

"With work travel, restrictions and quarantine in China, our family has ben apart for 49 days. And I’ll be truthful — every single one of them was hard," Frayer wrote in an April 1 Instagram post. "The worry, the decisions, the failed plans, the isolation. Throughout it, this little guy has been brave and sweet and resilient, and I have missed him more than I could possibly say."

"Trust that this was easily the. best. hug. ever," she added—and it looks like it [be right back, sobbing uncontrollably].

The Today show hosts couldn't hide their emotions discussing the reunion with Frayer.

"Okay Janis, I don't know how you're sitting there not sobbing," a moist-eyed Hoda Kotb said after seeing the video. "We can't keep it together," Savannah Guthrie agreed.

Frayer admits it was tough to even leave him to work that day. "He said to me, 'you know, Mommy, that was a lot of days you were away.' I said yeah, it was. He goes, 'let's not do that again, okay?'" She added that it has been tough to explain the coronavirus epidemic to her child, as well as the reasons for mass social distancing.

Guthrie and Kotb thanked Frayer for all the work she's been doing since the very beginning of the pandemic, as Frayer wiped away tears. "I'm glad they're back together," Guthrie told Kotb, her voice cracking.

"Let's get a check of the weather, because I would like to sit here and cry for a few moments," Guthrie added, cutting to Al Roker, who is working from home. Roker admitted he was "starting to get a little misty" thinking of his daughter, who is in Paris right now.

Frayer has been in China since January, when she traveled to Wuhan to cover, as she explains on Today, "what was still then a mystery virus." She reported on the growing pandemic from Japan in mid-February, and quarantined herself upon returning to China—continuing to report from a home studio. "To get official permission to isolate at home, my husband and son had to stay somewhere else."

The family could only wave to each other from an alley while they were separated for health safety, until their teary reunion yesterday.

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