After more than 25 years as a reporter and anchor at NBC, Hoda Kotb announced Thursday she intends to step down from the “Today” show. In a letter to staff at the NBC morning show, Kotb called the move to step down “the right decision, but it’s a painful one.”Kotb said her 60th birthday this summer helped trigger the departure: “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.”Her daughters are Haley, 7, and Hope, 5.”They say two things can be right at the same time, and I’m feeling that so deeply right now,” Kotb wrote. “I love you and it’s time for me to leave the show.”During her on-air announcement Kotb and her co-hosts were visibly emotional as she revealed her exit. “It was time for me to turn the page at 60,” Kotb said. “I decided this is the right time for me to move on. I obviously had my kiddos late in life and I was thinking that they deserve a bigger piece of my time pie that I have.”Kotb joined NBC in 1998 as a correspondent before making the move to co-host the fourth hour of “Today” in 2007, first with Kathie Lee Gifford, and later with Jenna Bush Hager. In 2018, Kotb added the show’s first two hours to her schedule, joining Savannah Guthrie as her co-anchor. “We don’t want to imagine this place without you, so it’s complicated because we love you so much and we don’t ever want you to go away,” Guthrie said, adding it takes “guts for someone to leave at the top of their game.”She says that while she is stepping down from her co-anchor role, she intends to remain in the NBC family. Kotb intends to step down sometime in the beginning of 2025. A replacement has not been announced.
After more than 25 years as a reporter and anchor at NBC, Hoda Kotb announced Thursday she intends to step down from the “Today” show.
In a letter to staff at the NBC morning show, Kotb called the move to step down “the right decision, but it’s a painful one.”
Kotb said her 60th birthday this summer helped trigger the departure: “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.”
Her daughters are Haley, 7, and Hope, 5.
“They say two things can be right at the same time, and I’m feeling that so deeply right now,” Kotb wrote. “I love you and it’s time for me to leave the show.”
During her on-air announcement Kotb and her co-hosts were visibly emotional as she revealed her exit.
“It was time for me to turn the page at 60,” Kotb said. “I decided this is the right time for me to move on. I obviously had my kiddos late in life and I was thinking that they deserve a bigger piece of my time pie that I have.”
Kotb joined NBC in 1998 as a correspondent before making the move to co-host the fourth hour of “Today” in 2007, first with Kathie Lee Gifford, and later with Jenna Bush Hager.
In 2018, Kotb added the show’s first two hours to her schedule, joining Savannah Guthrie as her co-anchor.
“We don’t want to imagine this place without you, so it’s complicated because we love you so much and we don’t ever want you to go away,” Guthrie said, adding it takes “guts for someone to leave at the top of their game.”
She says that while she is stepping down from her co-anchor role, she intends to remain in the NBC family.
Kotb intends to step down sometime in the beginning of 2025. A replacement has not been announced.
