In this paper, we propose a joint resource allocation, routing, and connection admission control (CAC) scheme for uplink transmission in orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) relay networks with cooperative relaying. For cooperative relaying, relay station can relay uplink data from mobile station (MS) to base station with cooperation of the MS using transmit diversity. Transmit diversity can be achieved by virtual MISO via distributed space---time coding. The proposed scheme jointly allocates OFDMA resources and selects path for each user with CAC to maximize the upink throughput of cooperative OFDMA relay networks. The basic OFDMA resource unit is considered as a resource element which is one subcarrier over one OFDMA symbol. An efficient multi-choice multi-dimensional knapsack (MMKP) algorithm is presented for the proposed scheme. The proposed MMKP algorithm provides a unified framework which is applicable to OFDMA networks with and without cooperative relaying. We evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme with and without cooperative relaying in a hilly terrain with heavy tree density by using OPNET-based simulation. We show that the cooperative relaying improve the uplink system throughput compared with non-cooperative relaying, and the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional link quality-based scheme in both cooperative and non-cooperative relay networks.