Hoda Kotb’s last day on the Today show, Jan. 10, was an emotional one. “From the minute I walked into 30 Rock that day to the minute I walked out, it’s like this beautiful parade of people were there. Maria Shriver came out, Simone Biles came out, Andy Cohen, Kathie Lee Gifford, Jimmy Fallon. And you know what I remember about it all? I remember my heart breaking,” she says now, sitting in the living room of her cozy all-white home in suburban Westchester County, N.Y. “When you say goodbye to something you love, even though it’s right, it’s like your heart’s broken and on display.”
When the cameras stopped rolling at 11 a.m. and the cast and crew and Kotb’s friends from all facets of her life descended onto the stage to send her off with a glass of champagne, her cohost Jenna Bush Hager burst into tears. Kotb’s daughters Haley, 8, and Hope, 6, also joined her on-set—and Haley was concerned. “She goes, ‘I’m worried about Jenna,’” Kotb recalls. “Jenna was holding and rocking her, and Haley was sitting there looking like she was protecting Jenna. Some things can be super sad and super beautiful, and that’s what that was.”
It’s been five months since Kotb walked away from one of the most coveted spots in broadcasting, and in that time she’s been settling into a new life, relishing the amount of time she has for her daughters and making plans for the future. “When someone erases your schedule and says, ‘Okay, here you go. Have fun,’ you’re sitting there going, ‘Oh my gosh, what am I supposed to be doing right now?’” says Kotb, 60. “On the very first day, I was scribbling in my journal and feeling a little off. There was a big, huge full moon, and it was so bright in my office, it was like a light was on. I still remember looking up, and Haley scampered down the stairs and jumped in my lap. She looked at me, and she goes, ‘You really are here.’ It was really, really beautiful.”
Kotb also hasn’t stopped working. She still hosts her podcast Making Space With Hoda Kotb, she’s continued to lead public Q&A events with female leaders like Maria Shriver and Melinda French Gates, and she will begin contributing one piece a month for the Today show starting this month. She’s also been hard at work launching a wellness company, Joy 101, complete with an app, live events and a subscription newsletter that will all center on themes of joy, mindfulness, meditation and wellness. (See sidebar.)
But it’s the small things that have been filling her days with the most joy. “It’s really cool to just realize that there’s so much more to life,” she says. “I wasn’t able to bear witness to my kids’ daily lives because of what I was doing. I got to see Haley sing ‘What a Wonderful World’ at 9:15 a.m.—I would have missed that. I used to think life was the big things, but it really is all the stuff that happens in between.”
Being there for things large or small has been critically important for Kotb as the family has navigated her younger daughter Hope’s medical condition over the past two years. In February 2023 a sudden onset of mysterious symptoms landed Hope in the hospital for two weeks and forced Kotb to take a leave of absence from the Today show. Now that the family has established a care routine that’s working, Kotb reveals that Hope is living with type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease that prevents the pancreas from making insulin, requiring vigilant blood sugar monitoring and frequent insulin injections.
“It’s kind of constant care for Hope. We’re monitoring her 24/7,” says Kotb, who calls her daughter a “trouper” for the way she’s dealing with the unpleasant realities of treatment. “She was getting shots—four or five a day—every day for a year. Now she is getting them less frequently because we have some other means to get her what she needs, but there’s a lot to it. Some kids can have sweets, and she can’t. If she’s up in the night, we have to take care of her at night.” After a pause Kotb adds, “She is a happy, healthy, rambunctious, amazing kid, and we have to watch her. Diabetes is a part of her but not all of her. I hope it shapes her but never defines her.”
Being able to be totally available for her daughter became a nonnegotiable, Kotb says, something that was not possible when she was locked into a long-term contract for a job that had hard deadlines and call times on the Today set and a daily wakeup at 3:15 a.m. “I really wanted to and needed to be here to watch over her. So, whenever she needs anything, and it can happen at night, multiple times, I’m up—I’m up up up,” she says. “But I would never, ever want Hope to one day grow up and say, ‘Oh, my mom left her job because [of me].’ It wasn’t that alone. But if you look at it cumulatively, it was a part of that decision.”
Kotb says it’s also been a transition to help big sister Haley understand why so much of Mom’s attention is going to Hope. “I think anybody who has one child who has immediate needs, sometimes you have to really work on it [to emotionally support the other]. And I’m actually trying to figure it out,” Kotb says. The girls will sometimes squabble and play-fight over who Mom loves the most. “I just need to make sure that Haley feels seen and loved. I keep telling them my heart’s ability to expand is beyond measure.”
Now that she is working from home, Kotb jokes there’s a “split verdict” on having Mom available all the time. “I think that on some days they love it, and sometimes I think I might be cramping their style a little bit, because they were used to a morning routine minus me,” she says. “I still feel like I’m learning how to be a calmer mother, and I want to be that mom for them, so I’m still a work in progress there.” But for Kotb, it’s heaven. She wakes up at 4:30—her version of “sleeping in” after years of an even worse schedule—meditates and writes in her journal before the girls get up. After walking her kids to school in a big neighborhood group, Kotb sometimes hits the gym or heads for a tennis lesson—a new hobby!—before zeroing in on work plans. Afternoons are filled with an array of afterschool activities, from bracelet making to field hockey for Haley and lacrosse for Hope. In between, “I pick up my guitar a lot more just because I can,” Kotb says. “I go on walks with the other moms from the burbs here after dinner, and I love that. Things I didn’t do before because I was too tired.”
She’s been into the city and back at her old Rockefeller Center stomping ground a few times since leaving Today. “Every time I walk in, I feel warm and fuzzy,” says Kotb. “It’s not like when you break up with someone, and you’re like, ‘Oh God, there he is!’ I don’t feel that. I want to see everybody. And look, the pictures are now Craig [Melvin] and Savannah [Guthrie]. I like looking at them.”
Seeing her old colleagues does inspire a wistful feeling for Kotb. “I just had coffee with Savannah a little more than a week ago, and we sat across from each other, and in that one hour we laughed, we cried, we held hands. She shared all this personal stuff, and I did too. And she asked me, ‘Tell me what it’s like on the other side,’” Kotb recalls. “And I said, ‘I’ll tell you what I miss: I miss this.’ I miss walking in a room and having an instant daily connection that you don’t have to put on a calendar. I saw Savannah and Jenna every day, without fail, and we shared our lives. It’s so funny. It’s not the work part of it, but I miss that a lot. It’s like an empty space for me.” That feeling is mutual. “I’ve missed her giggle so much,” says Guthrie. “She could really walk in a room, giggle, and everything in the world just fades away.”
But for Kotb, nothing can replace the feeling of seeing her children totally relaxed, knowing Mom is not going anywhere. “Sometimes I’m right there working in my office, and they’ll run up to the window and wave to me and throw up a heart [with their hands]. They’re fine because they want me to be here; they’re just happy to see me, and then they’ll go off and play,” she says. And at night—with no more call times—the girls cuddle up on either side of Kotb in bed. “I sleep in the middle so there’s no rolling over, and it is not my favorite sleeping position. But when I wake up, and they’re both nuzzled into me, I’m thinking to myself, like, ‘Oh my gosh, look at me! I get to lay here with these two kids, and all they want to do is be as close to me as they can get.’”
Additional reporting by ALEX ROSS
HAIR: LAURA CASTORINO; MAKEUP: MARY KAHLER; STYLIST: FRAN TAYLOR; (HODA) SWEATER: AQUA; JEANS: VERONICA BEARD; JEWELRY: JENNIFER MILLER; (HALEY) BLOOMINGDALE’S; (HOPE) KATIEJ NYC
TOP: ULLA JOHNSON
SHIRT: GABRIELA HEARST
NATHAN CONGLETON/NBC/GETTY IMAGES(2)
