Hoda Kotb Reveals Savannah Guthrie’s Surprising Response to ‘Today’ Exit

Hoda Kotb revealed the surprising three-word response her Today colleague Savannah Guthrie told her when she first broke the news she was leaving the show after 17 years.

“I called Savannah who was out of the country and I said, ‘I have to tell you something,’” Kotb told Seth Meyers. “She goes, ‘This sounds scary,’” and Kotb assured her, “‘It’s not. I’m going to be saying good-bye in January.’”

Kotb announced her exit from the show in September, but will remain as host until January 10. She and Guthrie have hosted the show together since 2017, following Matt Lauer’s exit.

Though Kotb didn’t reveal how long before her public announcement she had the conversation with Guthrie, she did share Guthrie’s surprising three-word response. “‘She said to me, ‘I’m going to tell you something right now.’ And I said, ‘OK.’ She said—these are her words—she goes, ‘You got balls.’”

Kotb said she found the brazen response oddly comforting. Guthrie also told her, “‘I’m going to be sad for me and for our show later, but not today. Today’s the day that I say, wow, you’re doing it.’ She was great.”

Kotb then described her reasons for leaving the show to Meyers. “I’d been thinking about it for a while and I was wondering when was the right time,” she said. “I thought all of us have a time pie and you kinda have to decide how much of your time pie do your kids get and how much does your work get. And so I thought, it’s time for my kids to get a bigger slice.”

Though she admitted she won’t miss waking up at 3 a.m. to host the early morning show, there’s a lot about her job she will miss—mainly the food at the 30 Rock commissary. The fact that she was leaving “weirdly hit” her for the first time during the Rockefeller Christmas tree lighting program she hosted this year.

“I was thinking to myself” during the program, she told Meyers, “I looked around for a second. You know how sometimes moments pass and you’re not in them? I was totally in it. I was like, ‘This is it right now.’”