HODA KOTB shares the truth about why she left the Today Show (exclusive)

PartyS last day on Today Show, January 10, was an emotional.

“From the moment I went into 30 rock that day to the moment I went out, that’s what this beautiful parade of people was there. Maria Shriver come out, Simone Biles come out, Andy CohenThe Kathie Lee GiffordThe Jimmy Fallon. And do you know what I remember about everything? I remember my heart breaking, “she tells people in her latest cover story, on a tripod Friday.” When you say goodbye to something you love, even if it’s right, it’s like your heart is broken and shown. ”

When the cameras stopped rolling at 11am and the actor and crew and Kotb’s friends from all aspects of her life pulled down on stage to send her with a glass of champagne, her co-host Jenna Bush Hager burst into tears. Kotb’s daughters Hajy8 and Hope6, also went with her on set – and Haley was worried.

“She goes, I’m worried about Jenna,” Kotb recalls. “Jenna held and swung her, and Haley sat there looking like she protected Jenna. Some things can be super sad and super beautiful, and that was what it was.”

It’s been five months since Kotb, 60, walked away from one of the most sought after places in the broadcastAnd during that time, she has settled in a new life, liked the time she has for her daughters and planned the future. She has been hard to launch a wellness company, Joy 101, complete with an app, live event and a subscription news letter that will all centen on the themes of joy, mindfulness, meditation and wellness.

But it is the little things that have filled her days with the most joy. “It’s really cool to just realize that there is so much more in life,” she says. “I couldn’t testify about my children’s daily lives because of what I did. I got to see Haley singing” what a wonderful world “at 9:15 – I would have missed it. I used to think that life was the big things, but that’s really all that happens in between.”

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Being there too big or small things has been critically important to Kotb because the family has navigated their younger daughter Hope’s Medical condition over the past two years. In February 2023, a sudden start of mysterious symptoms landed in the hospital for two weeks and forced Kotb to take leave Absence from Today show.

Now that the family has established a care routine that works, KOTB reveals that hope lives with type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease that prevents the pancreas from making its own insulin, which requires vigilant blood sugar monitoring and often insulin injections.

“It’s kind of constant care for hope. We monitor her around the clock,” says Kotb, who calls her daughter a “troops” for having to deal with the unpleasant reality in the treatment.

“She got shot – four or five a day – every day for a year. Now she gets them less often because we have some other ways to get her what she needs, but there is a lot for it, some children may have sweets and she can’t. If she’s up at night we have to take care of her at night.”

I thoughtfully adds Kotb, “She is a happy, healthy, Rambunctious, fantastic child, and we have to look at her. Diabetes is part of her, but not all of her. I hope it shapes her but never defines her.”

Being able to be fully accessible to her daughter became a non-negotiable, says Kotb, something that was not possible when she was locked up in a long-term contract for a job that had tough deadlines and talk times on Today set and a daily wake up at 3:15

“I really wanted to and needed to be here to watch over her. So when she needs something, and it can happen at night, several times, I’m up – I’m up,” she says. “But I would never ever want hope to one day grow up and say, ‘Oh, my mother left her job for (by me).’ It was not so lonely. But if you look at it cumulative it was part of that decision.

Now that she works from home, Kotb jokes that there is a “shared judgment” about having mom available all the time. “I think they love it on some days and sometimes I think I might hug their style a little, because they were used to a morning routine minus me,” she says. “I still feel that I learn to be a calmer mom, and I want to be the mother for them, so I’m still an ongoing work there.”

But for Kotb it is heaven. She wakes up at 4:30 – her version of “Sleeping in” after years of an even worse schedule – meditates and writes in her diary before the girls get up. After attending their children to school in a large neighborhood group, KotB sometimes meets the gym or head for a tennis lesson – a new hobby! – Before you are zeroing in on work plans.

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In the afternoons are filled with a variety of activities after school, from bracelet to field hockey for Haley and Lacrosse for hope. In between, “I pick up my guitar much more just because I can,” says Kotb. “I go for walks with the other moms from Burbs here after dinner and I love it. Things I didn’t do before because I was too tired.”

And nothing can replace the feeling of seeing their children completely relaxed, knowing that mom is not going anywhere. “Sometimes I’m right there and working in my office, and they will run up to the window and wave to me and throw up a heart (with my hands). They are good because they want me to be here, they are just happy to see me, and then they will go off and play,” she says.

And at night – without more talk times – the girls hug on each side of Kotb in bed. “I sleep in the middle so it’s not rolled over – and it’s not my favorite sleeping position – but when I wake up and they are both now in me, I think for myself like,” oh my gosh, look at me! I get to put here with these two children, and all they want to do is to be as close to me as they can come. “