Sam Champion spent Sunday in a hospital bed at the Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital in New York City. By Monday he was posting Instagram updates from that same bed, smiling and waving at the camera.
By Tuesday he was doing an Instagram Live. And the words he used in that Live are the ones that reframed the whole story.
“I have no doubt that the test that we did saved my life,” Champion said. “Which is not an easy thing to say.”
He is 64 years old. He is the longtime weatherman for Good Morning America. And a routine nuclear stress test, the kind that doesn’t always feel urgent when you schedule it, turned out to be anything but routine.
What Happened To Sam Champion?
Champion had the nuclear stress test the Thursday before his hospitalization. He shared the context in his Instagram post on Sunday night,
“Many of you know I had a nuclear stress test last Thursday. And we found some things that needed to be taken care of. So today I went into the cardiac catheterization laboratory… and we took care of it. Thanks to these procedures, I am well and expected to make a full recovery.”
What he did not fully detail in that initial post, but explained in the Instagram Live on Tuesday, was how serious those “some things” turned out to be.
Doctors accessed his heart through his arm and placed two stents during the procedure.
He had been experiencing the same recurring problems despite being tested repeatedly. “I was tested dozens of times and yet I still kept having the same problems,” he said.
Cardiac catheterization is a procedure in which a thin, flexible tube is threaded through a blood vessel to reach the heart. When blockages are found, stents, small mesh tubes, can be placed on the spot to hold the artery open and restore blood flow.
The fact that doctors found what they found, and addressed it immediately in the same session, is precisely the kind of outcome the procedure is designed to produce.
It is also, as Champion noted plainly, the kind of outcome that changes what might have happened otherwise.
He captioned a post-procedure Instagram Story simply, “After: a little work then back to normal.”
The Reaction From Colleagues
The comments on Champion’s hospital post read like a who’s-who of morning television.
Robin Roberts, who has been public about her own health battles over the years, breast cancer, a rare blood disorder that required a bone marrow transplant, wrote, “You know I’m here if you need anything at all! Speedy recovery on the way!”
Roberts had just been traveling in Brazil with Champion and his husband, Rubem Robierb, shortly before the hospitalization.
GMA meteorologist Ginger Zee added, “Healing vibes.”
Rebecca Jarvis, a GMA correspondent, commented, “So glad you are taking care of YOU! Feel good, Sam. Big hugs.” Al Roker, Champion’s counterpart at the Today show, crossed network lines to weigh in, “Sam The Man. Glad you are on the mend, my friend.”
ABC released a statement of its own, “We are grateful for the excellent care Sam received and look forward to welcoming him back when he is ready.”
Champion was absent from GMA’s Monday, March 23 broadcast. He is expected back Wednesday, March 25, where he has said he plans to sit down with Dr. Tara Narula, ABC’s chief medical correspondent, to discuss his treatment and recovery in detail on air.
This Is Not Champion’s First Health Scare
This is not the first time Champion has been candid with viewers about his health. In October 2024, he stepped away from GMA to have surgery for basal cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer, and returned to the broadcast showing the scar on his back, using the moment to talk about sun protection.
“While I can’t go back in time, these days we know more and I don’t leave home without putting on sunscreen,” he said at the time.
His willingness to share what is happening, in real time and without sanitizing it, is by now a recognizable part of who he is as a public figure.
The Sunday hospital post had the quality of someone posting from a difficult moment because the alternative, saying nothing and letting speculation fill the space, would have felt wrong to him.
He thanked his doctors by name. He said he was expected to make a full recovery. He shared the photo of himself smiling and waving.
And then, when the Live gave him the room to say the fuller truth, he said it: the test saved his life.
Who Is Sam Champion?
Champion has been a fixture in American television weather coverage for decades, working at WABC-TV in New York in addition to his GMA role. He is married to Rubem Robierb, a Brazilian-American artist; the two wed in 2020 in a ceremony that blended Brazilian and American traditions.
Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital, where he was treated, is among the country’s top-ranked cardiac care centers, named for renowned cardiologist Dr. Valentin Fuster and known for its advanced treatment protocols and research into cardiovascular disease.
Champion’s plan, as of Tuesday, was to be back on the GMA set by Wednesday morning, the day after this article publishes, to tell the story himself with his network’s medical team.
For anyone who has watched him do weather for years, the image of him in that hospital bed on Sunday, grinning and waving, is going to land differently now that the full picture has come into focus.
He went in for a routine test. The test found something. The something, in his own words, was serious enough that he has no doubt it saved his life.
He is expected to make a full recovery.
