TODAY Host Leaves Show So She Can Be an ‘Excellent’ Mom
By Movieguide® Contributor
Hoda Kotb recently opened up about why she’s happy with her decision to leave the TODAY show, and it has everything to do with her family.
“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,” Kotb explained of her desire to be there for her kids. “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.”
“I knew that I wanted this decade to be different,” she said of turning 60. “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.”
Movieguide® reported on her departure:
After 26 years at NBC, Hoda Kotb is officially leaving the TODAY show.
“I just turned 60, and it was such a monumental moment for me when I turned 60 years old, because I started thinking about that decade, like, what does that decade mean? What does it hold? What’s it going to have for me? And I realized that it was time for me to turn the page at 60 and to try something new,” Kotb said during a recent episode of TODAY.
The NBC anchor announced that she will remain as a co-anchor into early 2025 before moving into a new role at NBC.
“I had my kiddos late in life, and I was thinking that they deserve a bigger piece of the time pie that I have,” Kotb continued. “I feel like we only have a finite amount of time.”
Kotb wrote a letter to the TODAY staff about her exit, explaining that it is the “right decision.”
“As I write this, my heart is all over the map,” she wrote. “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.”
“My broadcast career has been beyond meaningful, a new decade of my life lies ahead, and now my daughters and my mom need and deserve a bigger slice of my time pie,” she continued. “I will miss you all desperately, but I’m ready and excited.”
Her decision to step away from her career and invest in her family comes after her daughter Hope experienced a medical crisis in 2023.
PEOPLE reported that the anchor “had suffered through a year of personal turmoil, after her younger daughter Hope, just 5, experienced a sudden medical crisis in Feb. 2023, which left the family searching for answers and working on long-term medical care solutions. (Kotb declines to share the specific ailment out of privacy concerns.)”
Within the last six months, Kotb moved her family to Westchester where her two daughters, Hailey and Hope, can play in the grass.
“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,” Kotb said. “We have really excellent care, I have people who are helping us out. I feel like she is finding steady footing.”
As for the next person who takes on her role at the TODAY show, Kotb has one piece of advice.
“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,” she explained. “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?”
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