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Hoda Kotb Reveals Her Biggest Fear - Just The Sip
Time is choky successful Hoda Kotb's jam-packed mornings.
Between 3:15 erstwhile her alarm rouses her awake and 7 a.m., erstwhile she takes her spot astatine the Today show desk—the spot she's shared with Savannah Guthrie since 2017 and volition vacate successful aboriginal 2025, she announced Sept. 26—the co-anchor has to acceptable successful a workout, guzzle a greenish juice, ablution and marque her mode done hairsbreadth and constitution connected the show's NYC set.
But she ever pauses for 1 cardinal ritual: Using the diary and pen she leaves retired connected her table, "I constitute 3 things I'm grateful for and 1 large happening that happened successful the past 24 hours," she described to Inside Chic back successful 2016.
Not each point has to beryllium momentous, "For example, I had a meaningful speech with a alien connected the street," she noted. "Or I'm moving successful the parkland and I'm astir to stop, erstwhile an aged feline throws his fists up and yells, 'Keep going, support going.' You go, 'Oh my God, yes, I'm going to support going.'"
The signifier forces affirmative thinking. Explained the seasoned journalist, "You commencement looking for the bully things successful the people of your day."
Of course, she needn't look excessively acold to find her dose of Joy.
While the 60-year-old's vocation has been connected a peculiarly crisp ascent the past fewer decades, for Kotb thing tops clip spent with her Valentine's Day baby, 7-year-old Haley Joy Kotb.
"I would instrumentality my worst day, the time erstwhile everything's falling apart, since Haley, implicit my favourite time before" she asserted during a January 2018 quality connected The Ellen DeGeneres Show. "She changed everything."
Since then, she's added a dose of hope with the April 2019 accomplishment of her second daughter, Hope Catherine Kotb. "It's a girl!" she shared with her colleagues, calling into the amusement with the quality that was a astonishment to everyone but Guthrie and Kotb's fourth-hour cohost Jenna Bush Hager. "Man, I'm truthful blessed she's here."
Today
A self-described optimist, the Oklahoma-born, West Virginia-raised newswoman moves done beingness with heavy gratitude. But each clip she heard that question—Did she person kids?—it felt similar a tiny stab to the heart.
Never caput that she knew the strangers who asked meant nary sick will. Or that she responded gracefully to the inquiry, noting, no, she didn't person children, but she simply adored nieces Hannah and Ella. Still, "I felt a small ouch inside," she told E! News, "because I felt similar thing was missing."
A 2007 conflict with bosom crab near her stronger, but incapable to person kids. "Every clip I swallow those pills, the pills are doing 2 things to me," she said astatine the clip of her people of treatment. "They're warring my crab and they're taking distant immoderate accidental to ever person a kid."
That cognition was rather virtually pugnacious to swallow. "It's hard to choke them down," she said. "But I instrumentality them each day, each night…It's each weird due to the fact that portion of maine feels bittersweet and portion of maine feels similar I got this caller beginning."
Despite that heartbreaking ritual, Kotb accepted her world truthful readily she adjacent considered abandoning her flourishing tv career—she'd travel to NBC News successful 1998 aft spending a decennary bouncing from Illinois to Mississippi to Florida to Louisiana arsenic a section quality correspondent—for the accidental to walk much clip with children arsenic a teacher oregon summertime campy director.
But she couldn't wholly quell the tiny dependable wrong that whispered her ain kid was retired there, somewhere. "I saw present earlier she was present, I felt her being," she told E! News. (In fact, that gut feeling led her to the sanction of her 2018 children's book, I've Loved You Since Forever.)
And wherefore shouldn't she beryllium allowed to person the 1 happening she's ever wanted? After all, she'd taken what she called "a risky move" by falling successful emotion again aft a short-lived matrimony to University of New Orleans tennis manager Burzis Kanga and a two-year romance with Jay Blumenkopf.
A accidental nighttime astatine an manufacture lawsuit she astir skipped led her to 66-year-old financier Joel Schiffman and a narration she treasured truthful dearly, she referred to him on-air simply arsenic Boots for 2 years to support their romance.
"Finally I said to myself 1 day, 'Why can't I? Why not me?'" she recalled to People in 2017 of deciding to determination guardant with adoption. "I had this ache successful maine that I couldn't propulsion distant anymore."
Broaching the taxable with Schiffman—already a dada to a grown daughter—was terrifying.
Instagram / Hoda Kotb
"I was acrophobic to adjacent accidental it retired loud, due to the fact that past it felt truthful real," she recalled to People. After she revealed that she'd similar to follow a babe with him, "I said, 'Think astir it for a time oregon a week oregon whatever.'"
His response, instant and certain, near her floored—and assured she'd recovered the cleanable idiosyncratic to genitor with. "He said, 'I don't request a day. Let's get this travel going,'" she recalled. "At that constituent I blubbered similar a baby. It was similar the dam burst."
In autumn of 2016—as she and Schiffman were moving into their archetypal flat together—she started the exertion process. "They said, 'We can't marque immoderate promises. We privation you bully luck,'" she told E! News. That's erstwhile she turned to her trusty journal, jotting down the aforesaid words implicit and over. "Every nighttime I scribbled, 'Please God, if you can…'"
She remembers the infinitesimal that supplication was answered. The exact moment.
Sitting successful her New York City office that wintertime morning, she was mid-FaceTime with a taxable for a communicative erstwhile a substance came done from a interaction she'd saved arsenic Ashley Project.
Understandably wanting to support the process nether wraps, she'd told lone her family, then-cohost Kathie Lee Gifford and a fewer different friends, "So I utilized the connection task truthful I wouldn't gaffe up and accidental adoption," she explained.
The connection had conscionable 2 words: Call me. Kotb rapidly ended the convo, looked astatine the timepiece and jotted down the time, 11:54 a.m. "I knew that that was the infinitesimal it was changing," she explained to Ellen DeGeneres. "I conscionable felt it."
She and Schiffman, nary longer her spouse successful life, but inactive a treasured co-parent, celebrated that Valentine's Day with the caller emotion of their lives.
"You deliberation that by a definite signifier successful your life, I've had each acquisition that I've had, and past each of a abrupt she shows up," she told Today. "I felt similar successful my life, I've had joyousness beyond what I could person imagined, but this is beyond a dream. Like, you had your dreams—and past this. I ne'er believed successful emotion astatine archetypal show until now."
For a period she and Haley Joy (named aft Halley's comet due to the fact that "I conscionable representation her sailing done the sky,") holed up successful their penthouse connected New York's Upper West Side where, she told People, they "ate and slept and burped and took naps."
To debar having to leave—with exceptions made for doc appointments—baby necessities were ordered in. (Kotb explained them distant to her doorman by saying she was hosting a shower.)
Until 1 day, she ran retired to drawback thing from adjacent drugstore Duane Reade. "A woman conscionable stopped maine connected the thoroughfare and she said, 'Oh, hi,' you know, thing astir the Today amusement and I said, 'Oh, hi,'" Kotb recounted to E! News. Then, she received the question she'd heard endless times before. "She said, 'Do you person children?'" remembered Kotb. "And I conscionable looked astatine her and said, 'Yeah,' I said, 'I person a daughter.'"
The infinitesimal turned her into "a weird handbasket case" she admitted. But she could hardly beryllium bothered by the information that she was sobbing connected a thoroughfare corner. "For the archetypal clip I said the words retired large that I had anticipation I would accidental 1 clip successful my life," she said. "And it was awesome."
Countless awesome moments followed, ranging from the bonzer (baby's archetypal Today appearance!) to those milestones that look rather ordinary, until they're happening to you and you're watching your ain kid basal oregon telephone retired to Dada.
Take the clip Haley attempted her first, somewhat staggering steps. "One day, seriously, she took a nap, she woke up and she started walking," Kotb relayed to DeGeneres. "Like, I didn't adjacent cognize erstwhile it happened oregon however it happened. She was like, 'Ok, bye!'"
Or erstwhile Kotb archetypal heard her belly laugh, a melody she's since described arsenic the "sweetest dependable connected the planet." Even Haley's teething and the long, restless nights that accompanied it were, well, a joy. As she explained to E! News astatine the time, "I've slept for 53 years."
While Kotb acknowledges determination whitethorn beryllium drawbacks to becoming a first-time genitor successful your fifties, "I don't adjacent attraction astir those," she told E! News. "What I cognize is erstwhile you privation thing and you've waited a agelong time, each 2nd counts. Every infinitesimal successful time, you're like, 'Oh my gosh,' and you savor it successful a mode that I'm not 100 percent definite I would person had I been a young mom."
So instrumentality that alien who felt it due to nonstop Kotb a missive detailing wherefore she felt she shouldn't person had kids aboriginal successful life.
Though that means it's a conflict to beryllium distant from her girls—when Kotb covered the 2018 Winter Olympics successful Pyeongchang, South Korea she strapped 1 of her daughter's tiny shoes to her backpack and toted a stack of pictures and a burp cloth—she's besides capable to find the positives successful adjacent the astir trying of parenting fails.
"You've seen pugnacious times successful your life, truthful you person much tolerance," the Dateline NBC alum explained to Us Weekly in 2018, recalling an incidental erstwhile Schiffman was retired of municipality and she was trying to fto pup Blake extracurricular and provender Haley astatine the aforesaid time.
"The canine knocked implicit a picture," said Kotb. "She's crying, he's barking, there's poop connected the floor, solid is broken. I was like, 'I mightiness person a breakdown.' Then I retrieve thinking, 'I would person begged God for this.'"
Hoda Kotb/Instagram
With days spent dancing (Haley loves "Despacito", she told Us Weekly, but "she precocious started dancing to a Nationwide commercial—she's similar her mother, she'll creation to anything!") and nights cuddled successful furniture speechmaking Goodnight Moon, Cat successful the Hat and Kotb's ain tome, Kotb feels so #blessed she couldn't imaginable privation for more.
She adjacent managed to crook Hope's terrifying 2023 wellness scare into a metallic lining situation.
"She's doing overmuch better," Kotb told USA Today successful March. "We've learned however to negociate each of it."
What's more, she continued, "She has shown, and I've learned from her, erstwhile a household is successful a truly hard and scary situation, which we were, and a batch of families person been successful those benignant of situations, with thing truthful scary, you tin really go better. Haley, her older sister, is simply a amended sister. Hope is simply a much resilient idiosyncratic than I ever imagined and I didn't cognize I could emotion her immoderate more."
So wherefore not adhd different impermanent to the party?
For years, Kotb has bandied astir the thought of adopting again, revealing that the process got delayed a spot during the coronavirus pandemic. Still, "I person not closed the door," she said portion appearing connected The Jamie Kern Lima Show in August. "I get signs. I person held connected to each of our babe stuff, each of it, due to the fact that here's the information astir life: I support gathering radical who punctual you that your heart's quality to grow is beyond measure."
And present that she's stepping backmost from Today, because, as she enactment it, "my daughters and my ma request and merit a bigger portion of my clip pie," there's nary clip similar the present.
The determination to grow her household was comparatively easy, she shared with DeGeneres backmost successful 2020.
"I was scribbling successful my diary and I was asking myself that question," she explained. "And I wrote successful there, 'I'm wondering if we should.' And past I wrote, 'Do we person capable love?' and I wrote, 'Yes.' And I said, 'Do we person capable time?' And I wrote, 'Yes.' And I said, 'Would our household beryllium much enhanced?' I wrote, 'Yes.' So, I was reasoning possibly the reply is yes."
Always look for the good.
(E! and NBC are portion of the NBCUniversal family)
(Originally published April 6, 2018, astatine 5:00 a.m. PT)
English (US) ·