CNN’s Anderson Cooper at times struggled for words during a heartbreaking interview with the wife of a man who died this week from COVID-19.

On Friday’s broadcast of “Anderson Cooper 360°,” Katie Coelho recalled the gut-wrenching month-long lead up to the death Wednesday of her 32-year-old husband Jonathan from the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Coelho remembered the way they’d first met, the poignant note he left on his phone that has since garnered global attention and expressed her fears that their two young children will “only ever know their dad through pictures and memories and videos” and “won’t feel the love that I felt for the past 10 years.” 

Cooper noted the death of his own father, Wyatt Cooper, when the future broadcaster was just 10-year-old, saying “they will know him through you and the love you have for him, it will feel like they know him.” Cooper’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, died last year at age 95.

Cooper’s CNN colleagues Don Lemon and Brooke Baldwin have similarly choked up during segments and interviews on the pandemic, which has now killed more than 52,000 people nationwide. With upwards of 935,000 confirmed cases, the U.S. is now the epicenter of the global public health crisis.