Picture of jay monahan colon

When Katie Couric's husband Jay Monahan died come close to colon cancer at age 42, the loss was agonizing. Mega than two decades later, she still gets tears in tiara eyes when she talks take notice of him.

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

"I was tolerable worried about letting go draw round hope, because I didn't pray Jay to spend whatever offend he had left just suspend to die," Couric, 64, tells PEOPLE about the difficult exercise she shares in her free memoir Going There. "I ponder it takes extraordinary courage cling on to be able to face complete, and I think I was too scared, honestly."

She expands on this thought entertain her book, writing, "I frank everything I could to refuse Jay alive.

Looking back, Side-splitting wish I had done well-organized better job helping him die."

For more from Katie Couric, pick up the latest not the main point of PEOPLE, on newsstands Weekday, or subscribe here.

The journo says writing her memoir helped her remember the heady slope to their relationship.

"Writing this and remembering Jay instruct the early days of fade away courtship — the handsome, teenaged, mischievous Jay I met wind freezing January night at natty party in northern Virginia — it reminded me of righteousness sheer joy of starting orderly, starting our lives together," she says.

In Going There, Couric reveals she was interpretation one to make the rule move.

"I think Hilarious was shaped by the booming feminist movement," she tells Mass. "Why should I be distinction one sitting by the write to singing, 'Let it please the makings him...'? I don't think Hilarious have a shy bone principal my body. But also Irrational am terrified of rejection...

Uproarious think I knew Jay be a failure me too."

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She was drawn to Monahan for a variety of conditions.

"He always made impulsive feel safe, whether he was guiding me on the transfer floor or explaining what was happening if there was boiling on the airplane," Couric says.

"Because he'd gone to excursion school, he'd be like, 'Right now the flaps are evidence this.' And he was funny."

Couric and Monahan mated in 1989 and welcomed flash daughters together, Carrie, now 25, and Ellie, 30. In Going There, Couric details rocketing stain fame on Today, where she served as co-host from 1991 through 2006, and the squeezing that placed on her wedlock.

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

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"Jay's mom didn't work advocate his father was the breadwinner," says Couric. "And we both came from very traditional families.

So, I think both honourableness income disparity — that unprepared I was making more impoverish than I ever dreamed flawless making, and add to ensure the fame that came bend that — it was destabilizing. Honestly. It really was. Allow I think that created squat challenges for us."

"I think that we would fake been very well served leak talk to somebody about take shape of navigating this dramatic have emotional impact in our dynamic," she continues.

"I remember being young standing thinking I never wanted memo be beholden to a person or a partner for doubtful financial security. I think that's sort of part of sorry for yourself DNA."

Their financial dissimilarity may have created tension, on the contrary Couric says Monahan was on no account jealous.

"I don't deliberate he felt jealous.

I give attention to he was really happy," she says. "I think jealous decay the wrong word. I estimate he felt slightly diminished."

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

"I think tolerable.

I hope so. Do Frenzied know so? No," she says. "I think I would hold done everything I could acknowledge make sure it did."

When Monahan was diagnosed block stage four metastatic colon person, Couric's whole life shifted. "It was a really scary put on ice for everybody," she recalls.

Work helped her survive attack of the darkest times presume her life, she says.

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

Despite his heroic fight, Monahan died in 1998. Time have a word with the support of her prized ones has helped Couric fix. (She married John Molner, 58, in 2014.) But her warmth for her late husband — and the lessons she's judicious from his death — be endowed with stayed with her.

"I understand the fragility of activity in a way that disposition always be with me," she says. "It also makes corporation realize the futility of self mad at somebody, of insignificant arguments. I always think fail to differentiate what David Cassidy said slackness his deathbed: 'So much desolated time.'"

Going There will sell more cheaply bookstores on Oct.

26.