Longtime Today show host, Hoda Kotb made the official announcement on Thursday that she would be retiring from her spot on the program, which immediately caused her co-host Savannah Guthrie to gush tears. She cried so hard one of her fake eyelashes came off. When you have spent a lot of time working with someone and you’ve also gotten an opportunity to get to know them outside of the workplace, you feel like a piece of you is dying when that individual moves on to a new phase of life. Going from seeing a close friend every single day to only seeing them here and there is a difficult transition to make.
Al Roker and Sheinelle Jones were also present during the tear-filled segment.
Via PEOPLE:
“Here’s my lash,” Guthrie told Kotb, handing one over to her co-host as they were live on air. Kotb then broke from her current report to give a close-up of the false lash to the camera. A few seconds later, Guthrie jokingly attempted to instead pass the lash to Jones, 46, who said, “That is disgusting!” and jumped out of the way, laughing. “I don’t want to hold a lash, that’s okay,” Roker, 70, quipped to Jones moments later before launching into his own report, as she again jokingly attempted to pass it on.
Kotb opened up on the NBC morning news series Thursday about how was ready “to turn the page” in her life, which includes an early-2025 departure from the show as Guthrie’s co-anchor since 2018 and a total of 17 years on Today. Through tears, Kotb explained her reasoning to her Today family on the show Thursday, surrounded by Guthrie, Roker, Jones, Craig Melvin and Kotb’s fourth-hour co-host Jenna Bush Hager.
During the segment, Guthrie, clearly emotional, told her dear friend, “Hoda, we love you so much. And when you look around and see these tears, they’re love. You are so loved. … We don’t want to imagine this place without you.”
“But also, I just want to say I am so proud of my friend,” she added. “You have guts. For someone to leave at the top of their game — to leave something that’s wonderful, that you love, where it’s easy and comfortable and beautiful and fun and say, ‘But I dream even bigger for myself,’ into the great unknown, you have so much guts.”
“You inspire me. I love you,” Guthrie told Hoda, going on to say at the end of the segment, “You are our sunshine.”
Kotb informed her colleagues in a letter addressed to them that was published on Thursday that she would still be part of NBC, but would no longer be active in the anchor position starting in 2025.
"*" indicates required fields
“I realized that it was time for me to turn the page at 60, and to try something new,” she wrote in the letter. “I remembered standing outside looking at these beautiful bunch of people with these gorgeous signs, and I thought, ‘This is what the top of the wave feels like for me.’ And I thought it can’t get better, and I decided that this is the right time for me to kind of move on.”
Kotb went on to address what went into the decision in her personal life — namely, that she intends to spend more time with her family, which includes daughters Haley, 7, and Hope, 4. (She shares the girls with her ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman.)
“As I write this, my heart is all over the map,” she stated later on in the letter. “I know I’m making the right decision, but it’s a painful one. And you all are the reason why. They say two things can be right at the same time, and I’m feeling that so deeply right now. I love you and it’s time for me to leave the show.”
Let’s all hope Hoda enjoys the additional time with her children.