After missing multiple appearances on Today With Hoda and Jenna in a matter of weeks, viewers are understandably concerned and wondering where Hoda Kotb is and when she will return. Rest assured, Today lovers, Kotb isn’t going anywhere, and we’ve got all the information on where she went below.The TV journalist has presented the fourth hour of the Today show since 2007, initially with Kathie Lee Gifford and currently with Jenna Bush Hager.
Kotb also co-hosts the main hour, a post she has had since 2018. Throughout her career, she has been nominated for over ten Daytime Emmy Awards and has won one for Outstanding Informative Talk Show Host. Kotb is also an accomplished novelist, having written eight books, including numerous children’s books and the New York Times best-selling memoir Hoda: How I Survived War Zones, Bad Hair, Cancer, and Kathie Lee.
After missing a week, Kotb returned to Today in her regular time slots. Her reappearance appeared to be short-lived, as the host unexpectedly exited midway through the March 27 broadcast. Kotb was absent again on April 10, fueling speculation about her disappearance. So, where is Hoda Kotb today? Continue reading to learn why Hoda Kotb was missing.
Despite appearing for the first two hours of the NBC morning show on March 27, Kotb was significantly absent for the fourth hour, when she usually leads Today With Hoda and Jenna. Willie Geist, anchor of Sunday Today, took her place, and Bush Hager praised his abilities to “host all the shows on television.” Neither Bush Hager nor Geist mentioned Kotb’s absence,
instead jumping immediately into Geist’s recent appearance on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Bush Hager commended Geist’s acting abilities and even proposed that he appear on a daytime soap program. “I think you could be on, like, The Young and the Restless,” she told me. Kotb’s absence came shortly after she took the previous week off for a spring break trip with her children, Haley, 7, and Hope, 4, whom she shares with ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman, prompting people to suspect that it was family-related. The mother of two shared photographs from her beach holiday on Instagram, captioned “Beautiful days… magical nights.”
Kotb went absent again on the April 10 program of Today, during her and Bush Hager’s fifth anniversary week. Today co-host Savannah Guthrie joked that Kotb was “on assignment” when Sheinelle Jones stood in for her in the third hour of Today.
Guthrie later reported that Kotb was “one her way to New Orleans” for Hoda & Jenna’s special fifth anniversary episodes on April 11 and April 12. In a March 2024 episode of Today, Kotb and Bush Hager revealed that they will take the show to New Orleans to celebrate their fifth anniversary. “There’s just one place we could celebrate,” Bush Hager said, and Kotb added, “It’s where we have the most fun, where we can be wild. We’re wild when we go there.”
In 2023, Kotb took an extended leave of absence from the show owing to a “family health matter.” She then reported that Hope had been hospitalized for more than a week with an unidentified ailment. Although she did not reveal her daughter’s diagnosis, she did state that it is now a long-term condition.
Kotb’s unexpected exit during the March 27 program fueled speculation that something was amiss with her daughter once more. The host did not acknowledge her absence at the time, but she had been active on social media. Hours after leaving the event, she posted an Albert Einstein quotation on Instagram, saying, “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” She captioned it, “Ohh I love this one xo.” You are free to select the belief you hold. Isn’t this fantastic? You have the freedom to make your own decisions. “I will always choose friendly…goodness is all around.”
On March 27, she also posted an edition of her podcast, Making Space. During the show, Kotb disclosed that she and her girls are preparing to relocate, despite her previous terrible experiences with relocation as a child. “I was considering moving. My children and I are about to relocate to a new school, and I was reflecting on my childhood and how many times we moved,” she told guest and bestselling author Arthur Brooks on the show. “I remember being scared when my parents transferred us to Nigeria when I was in fourth grade. Like, when we got to this place, the language was different, everyone seemed different, and it was difficult. “I moved again in sixth grade.”
She went on to say, “It’s interesting because the stories I tell now as an adult are about how I got through it or what I did to deal. At the same time, as I prepare my children, I feel like I’m shielding them from activities that they should probably be doing.”