While presenting the news, anchor Julie Chen started to stutter before looking down slightly and the broadcast ended, leading viewers to later discover she had experienced a serious health crisis. An anchor from Oklahoma revealed she suffered a stroke live on air, which caused her stuttering, according to the "New York Post."
Julie Chen, who works for a local NBC station in Tulsa, was taken to the hospital on Saturday after struggling to read the news script. In a Facebook post, she wrote, "The past few days are still somewhat hazy for me, but my doctors believe I suffered a stroke live on air Saturday morning."
Chen confirmed she felt energetic and active before the broadcast and showed no signs of a health crisis before the stroke. However, she said, "Then, over several minutes during our news segment, things started to happen. First, I experienced partial vision loss in one eye. Shortly thereafter, my arm went numb."
She stated, "Then I knew I was in big trouble when I couldn't move my mouth to read the words directly in front of me on the teleprompter."
Chen's professionalism in handling the situation was noted as she was reading a story about NASA canceling a much-anticipated rocket launch when she began to visibly falter and repeated her words. After struggling for several seconds, Chen apologized to the viewers, saying, "I'm sorry, there’s something happening to me this morning."
She quickly handed the broadcast over to weather anchor Annie Brown for a weather update. Chen commented, "My coworkers recognized the emergency and called 911."
