Hoda Kotb left the TODAY show after nearly 20 years on the air. She announced her decision in September 2024, explaining the reason for her exit. “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 said.
Over the years, it was clear that Hoda prioritized her children above her career. However, she was able to balance both with grace.
“Sometimes I wonder like, ‘How did this happened? How did I get this?’” Hoda said of becoming a parent to E News. “I used to feel almost undeserving of it. But I don’t anymore. Something happened within me where I was like, ‘You know what, I’m worthy of these children, I’m worthy of myself. I’m enough just as I am. I will nurture and love these little girls, as long as God lets me have them for as long as I’ll be here.’”
And she’s very much open to adopting another child to expand her brood! Or at least she was toying with the idea in 2020, while she was still engaged to her boyfriend of 9 years, financier Joel Schiffman. “We wondered, you know, would our family be better with another child? Do we have enough love, do we have enough time, you know, will we be a better family unit?” she recalled to ET. “And the answer to all those questions seems to be ‘yes, we would be.’ But you can’t control how life works,” she added. “It’s in God’s hands, it’s not in mine, so if it’s meant to be, we’re happy ’cause, you know, we have room and we have love.”
Sadly, Hoda announced she and Joel broke off their engagement in January 2022. “We decided that we are better as friends and parents than we are as an engaged couple, so we decided that we are going to start this new year on our new path as loving parents to our adorably delightful children and as friends,” Hoda said on the third hour of Today. It remains to be seen if Hoda’s two daughters will still end up with another sibling, but drama did rock the family in February of 2023 when Hoda disappeared from the Today Show, later to reveal that her youngest daughter Hope had been hospitalized. She’s since been brought home and is recovering.
Let’s meet Hoda’s two girls, below!
