Why Hoda Kotb is absent from ‘Today’ show after daughter Hope’s health scare
Hoda Kotb is taking a week-long “Today” show break to spend time with her kids.
Page Six can confirm that the journalist is absent from the morning show while daughters Haley, 5, and Hope, 3, are on spring break.
Kotb’s fourth-hour co-host, Jenna Bush Hager, is also off air all week.
Pre-recorded episodes of “Today With Hoda & Jenna” are playing through Friday.
Kotb’s brief absence comes two weeks after she returned to NBC on March 6 following a “family health matter.”
The 58-year-old, who hadn’t been on air since February, told viewers that her younger daughter was home after being “in the ICU for a few days and in the hospital for more than a week.”
Kotb gushed that she was “just so happy” and “over the moon” to have Hope under her roof, noting, “We are watching her closely.
“I’m grateful for the doctors and the nurses,” she added, tearing up.
The former “Dateline” correspondent admitted that she had a hard time “living in [a] lane” of thankfulness during Hope’s health scare.
“Then I decided, ‘You know what, let me think about this for a minute,'” Kotb recalled at the time.
“‘I have a family who loves me, I have a little girl who’s Hope, I have a wonderful support system. I have doctors who would’ve done anything to make everything better.'”
Now, the Daytime Emmy winner wears an “M” necklace for strength.
“It’s worn down because I rub it all the time, and it says, ‘God’s got this,'” she explained of the sentimental jewelry.
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The NBC personality co-parents Hope and her big sister with ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman, whom she split from in January 2022.
Seven months later, Kotb explained to People how she and the financier, 65, “switch each week” while raising the little ones.
“He’ll take the girls and do some fun things, and I’ll take some quiet time,” she said in the August 2022 interview. “It’s a healthy mix, and the kids love it.”
Kotb clarified that she and Schiffman have two nannies and are “very open about fixing things.”
