Hoda Kotb has a nickname. “They call me Hodini because I always leave the party early,” she says. “Look, sometimes you miss a lot! People will be like, ‘Guess who showed up and sang?’ And I'm like, ‘Wait, what? I left before that.’” But the Today anchor, 60, says she’s typically comfy with her decisions. “It's got its pluses and minuses, but it serves me properly,” she says. “So it works for me.”
There was maybe no clearer instance of leaving the celebration early than Kotb’s surprising Sept. 26 announcement that she could be departing the Today present after 17 years and 25 years whole working for NBC. “I've kind of been contemplating, wondering, thinking about what I wanted this next chunk of my life to look like as I turned 60. And I like adventure, I like new beginnings. I'm a sunrise person and not a sunset person, and I was wondering, what does it look like for me?”
The determination to depart the coveted function anchoring alongside Savannah Guthrie and cohosting the ten a.m. hour with Jenna Bush Hager comes after Kotb had suffered by means of a 12 months of non-public turmoil, after her youthful daughter Hope, simply 5, skilled a sudden medical disaster in Feb. 2023, which left the household trying to find solutions and dealing on long-term medical care options. (Kotb declines to share the particular ailment out of privateness issues.)
In the final six months, Hope’s scenario has drastically stabilized, and Kotb moved Hope and large sister Hailey, 7, out of their Upper West Side house to a house in Westchester the place they will expertise “being barefoot and on grass,” with a yard and a swingset. “We're in a place where Hope is thriving. She is improving, we're watching her, and I think that as time goes on, we'll have a better handle on it, but we're already seeing great differences,” says Kotb, who seems to be visibly extra comfy than she did when discussing the scenario with PEOPLE in Feb. 2024. “We have really excellent care, I have people who are helping us out. I feel like she is finding steady footing.”
But whilst Hope’s scenario improved, Kotb agonized over the calls for on her time. Kotb first grew to become a mom at 54 through adoption; when she welcomed her second youngster through adoption two years later, she ended up extending her maternity depart, angst ridden over her return to work.
“I've had yearnings, and you know when something's pulling you? It's like you either go toward it or you shove it down and say, ‘Nope, this is the way. I'm going to stay here because it's safe,’” she says. “It does make more sense to stay at NBC. I'm financially secure and I would have job security. I mean, why would you ever not do that? But I've been watching my kids and I was thinking to myself, I wonder what I'm missing?”
Now that Hailey is in second grade, and Hope is in Kindergarten, she sees time flying by.
“I knew that I wanted this decade to be different. I looked at my time like a pie. I was like, this is how much time I get, and now what am I going to do with it and how am I going to carve it up? And I wanted it to be filled with more of them.”
Nathan Congleton/NBC through Getty
After years of juggling and dealing with mother guilt, Kotb says she was prepared for that change. “There’s the guilt you carry because you can't be 100% at work and 100% at home. Something has to give if you want excellence. If you're going to be excellent at work, something has to give at home. And if you want to be excellent at home, I mean excellent, and do all the things, something has to give at work. It can't be equal,” she says.
Kotb is stoic in regards to the job she’s forsaking. “Whoever's interested in that seat, and it's maybe the best seat in television, I think the best advice I have is to be 1,000% who you are, because that's really the key,” Kotb says. “And the other thing, too, is sometimes to me, part of the magic is to be able to delight in the person sitting next to you. It's such a small thing, but sometimes when you're with someone, if you just let them shine. Give everyone a second, because who wants to be the person at the cocktail party who's talking all the time?”
Hoda Kotb/Instagram
Looking to the longer term, Kotb will lastly have time to really go to a cocktail celebration if she needs.
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“To have kind of a social life will be new for me,” says Kotb, who says she has virtually by no means taken off greater than a pair days of labor at a time, and has woken up at 3:30 a.m. day-after-day together with weekends now, for years. “I went to a barbecue and I was up till 9 p.m. and I felt like I was on a bender. I go, ‘I've got to go.’ And everybody’s like, ‘Why?’ I go, ‘Because it's 9 p.m.’ But I thought, you know what? I'm not going to be playing beat the clock all the time anymore.”
But most of all, she’s trying ahead to time with her women — even when they’re somewhat impatient for the beginning date.
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“I was like, ‘Guess what? Mommy is going to be able to take you to school now,’” Kotb recollects of breaking the information of her profession transition to the children when it was a performed deal the Tuesday earlier than this interview. “They said, ‘Wednesday?’ I go, ‘No, honey, not Wednesday.’ ‘Well, Thursday?’ I go, ‘No, no, no, honey, it's going to be like after January.’ ‘After my birthday?’ They were horrified,” she says with fun. “At this point it's so far away. ‘It's after Halloween?’ I go, ‘Yeah, honey, it's after Halloween!’ A month might seem like forever to them but it’ll sink in eventually.”
