Three days after Ray Rice won his appeal and was reinstated to the NFL on Friday, an emotional interview with his wife Janay Rice aired on NBC's Today Show on Monday morning.

With tears in her eyes and her mother beside her, Janay relived the painful February incident, in which her then-fiancée knocked her out with a punch inside a hotel elevator, and its painful aftermath, which she described as "a horrible nightmare." She feels like she and her husband were "chosen" to bring awareness on domestic violence and that's something that they're at peace with. 

"I feel like God chose me and Ray for a reason and it was definitely to bring awareness to what people are going through every day," Janay told NBC's Matt Lauer. "You know it’s not what I am going through every day but you know it’s definitely brought this topic to the forefront...and we are okay with that."

She added later that the hardest part of their whole ordeal is to have the incident "made public and have it all be negative."

The biggest revelation of the two-part interview, though, was Janay Rice saying her husband told NFL commissioner Roger Goodell the truth, despite the league's commissioner saying that the ex-Baltimore Ravens running back's account of the domestic violence incident was "ambiguous."

“I know for a fact…that Ray told the honest truth that he’s been telling from February,” Janay said in the interview.

She proceeded to say that she hopes an NFL team gives her husband an opportunity to play in the league again and thinks that will happen once they talk to him one-on-one.

“We know it’s going to take some work,” Janay continued. “So I think once he shows them who he is and they reach out to people here, and they find out the things that he’s done, then I think it’s definitely good … At the end of the day, he’s a football player and that’s what they should really be focused on, because he’s proven himself as a football player for seven years. There’s never been a question on what he can do on the field.”

The second segment of the interview airs Tuesday morning and will feature Ray Rice explaining why an NFL team out there should give him a chance after this trying ordeal.

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(Photo: Today via NBC)