diff --git a/nemo/collections/nlp/models/nlp_model.py b/nemo/collections/nlp/models/nlp_model.py
index 9d3575944e97..e6510878a8c4 100644
--- a/nemo/collections/nlp/models/nlp_model.py
+++ b/nemo/collections/nlp/models/nlp_model.py
@@ -253,9 +253,10 @@ def load_from_checkpoint(
             if 'cfg' in kwargs:
                 model = cls._load_model_state(checkpoint, strict=strict, **kwargs)
             else:
-                model = cls._load_model_state(
-                    checkpoint, strict=strict, cfg=checkpoint[cls.CHECKPOINT_HYPER_PARAMS_KEY], **kwargs
+                cfg = checkpoint[cls.CHECKPOINT_HYPER_PARAMS_KEY].get(
+                    'cfg', checkpoint[cls.CHECKPOINT_HYPER_PARAMS_KEY]
                 )
+                model = cls._load_model_state(checkpoint, strict=strict, cfg=cfg, **kwargs)
             checkpoint = model
 
         finally:
diff --git a/tutorials/nlp/Relation_Extraction-BioMegatron.ipynb b/tutorials/nlp/Relation_Extraction-BioMegatron.ipynb
index 1f74c308922f..e1bfc234e9d0 100644
--- a/tutorials/nlp/Relation_Extraction-BioMegatron.ipynb
+++ b/tutorials/nlp/Relation_Extraction-BioMegatron.ipynb
@@ -363,6 +363,7 @@
    "outputs": [],
    "source": [
     "# download the model's configuration file \n",
+    "MODEL_CONFIG = 'text_classification_config.yaml'\n",
     "config_dir = WORK_DIR + '/configs/'\n",
     "os.makedirs(config_dir, exist_ok=True)\n",
     "if not os.path.exists(config_dir + MODEL_CONFIG):\n",