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OAN Staff James Meyers
1:42 PM – Thursday, September 26, 2024
After 26 years with NBC, the “Today” show co-host Hoda Kotb is calling it quits.
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The journalist made the announcement on Thursday morning that she’s leaving the NBC news program.
“As I write this, my heart is all over the map,” she wrote in a letter to Today staff. “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.”
“I’m picturing your faces and your families and all the ways you’ve lifted me up and inspired me,” she continued. “That’s my heart singing. So many of my professional relationships have become some of my most cherished friendships.”
“I’ve been weighing this decision for quite a while — Am I truly ready?” she went on. “But, my 60th birthday celebration on the Plaza felt like a shift. Like a massive, joyful YES, you are! I saw it all so clearly: 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. I will miss you all desperately, but I’m ready and excited.”
Kotb shared the news in-person with her co-anchors Savannah Guthrie, Al Roker, Jenna Bush Hager, Craig Melvin and Sheinelle Jones.
“I have spent 26 years at NBC,” she said. “I just turned 60, and it was such a monumental moment for me, because I started thinking about that decade. I realized that it was time for me to turn the page at 60 and to try something new.”
“I decided that this is the right time to move on,” Kotb shared, adding that she wants to spend more time with her daughters, Haley, 7, and Hope, 5.
“Obviously I had my kids late in life and they deserve a bigger piece of my time pie that I have,” she went on. “With all that being said, this is the hardest thing in the world.”
“I’m gonna be here past the first of the year, and I’m gonna stay in the NBC family,” Kotb said. “But it’s kind of a big deal for me.”
She added in her letter, “Happily and gratefully, I plan to remain a part of the NBC family, the longest work relationship I’ve been lucky enough to hold close to my heart. I’ll be around. How could I not? Family is family and you all will always be a part of mine.”
Currently, Kotb co-anchors the first two hours of “Today” with Guthrie.
Hoda had been a part of NBC News for almost three decades, after previously working at Dateline.
“We love you so much,” Guthrie tearfully said on TODAY. “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.”
“So it’s complicated because we love you so much, and we don’t want you to ever go,” she continued. “But also I just want to say I am so proud of my friend. 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 bigger for myself into the great unknown.’ You have so much guts. You inspire me. I love you.”
Kotb started her journalism career as a reporter for a news station in Moline, Illinois, from 1988 to 1989. Then she worked as a weekend anchor and reporter for a CBS affiliate station in Fort Myers, Florida, and then in New Orleans, Louisiana, before being offered a job at NBC.
The hard-working journalist also has her own podcast, Making Space with Hoda Kotb, that she started in 2021. She also had a one-hour, two-day a week radio show on SiriusXM from 2015 to 2022.
Kotb did not announce an official date but alluded to leaving the show in early 2025.
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