After Hoda Kotb’s emotional announcement that she is leaving “TODAY” next year, Jenna Bush Hager tearfully remembered how Kotb was in her corner when it came to becoming her co-host.
“You are who I come to, and you believed in me first,” Bush Hager told Kotb on the fourth hour of “TODAY” on Thursday. “We have a lot of bosses and I love them, but this lady on Oct. 28, 2013 — I looked it up — said, ‘Hey, want to come sit next to me? There’s room.’”
Kotb and Bush Hager celebrated five years of co-hosting the fourth hour in April.
“Looking at you and seeing magic was one of the easiest things I’ve ever seen in my life,” Kotb told Bush Hager.
Kotb recalled Bush Hager calling her father, former President George W. Bush, to work through the jitters at first.
“You called your dad, and I remember when you first started working together with me, you were afraid,” Kotb said.
“I called my dad when I started and he said, ‘I’m so happy for you. And Hoda’s the star. You’re going to be OK with that, right? You’re going to be OK sharing the spotlight with the star?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, of course.’”
Bush Hager called her father again after learning from Kotb that she had decided to leave “TODAY.”
“And then he said, ‘Oh, she’s leaving because it’s time, and you’re going to be fine,” Bush Hager said. “It’s your turn. It’s OK.”
“It’s your turn,” Kotb said. “Whoever sits in this seat is going to have the easiest job in the world because they’re sitting next to you. The only thing they have to do is not laugh so hard they pee their pants. That it’s, they just have to hang on. You’re this bright light, you always have been, and it’s your turn. Your dad is so wise.”
“If I’m bright, it’s because I’m sitting in your glow,” Bush Hager responded.
Bush Hager admittedly struggled when Kotb first gave her the news.
“Hoda told me just a couple days ago, and when she told me, my first reaction, it was, from my gut, it was almost crazy,” Bush Hager said. “I said, ‘No, you can’t leave because what we have here with all of these people.’ What I get to sit next to you and feel is this, it’s what’s between us, and it is magical and powerful, and it feels like that here.”
Bush Hager called Thursday a “bittersweet, beautiful day” because Hoda is being “brave” and “doing what’s best for her girls.”
Kotb spoke about how her 60th birthday celebration in August put her in a reflective mood that spurred her decision to make a change.
“I think when I look back on my sixties, 10 years from now, it’s going to be filled with new adventures, working my entrepreneur skills hopefully, and also watching my kids take baby steps. And that’s it.”
However, she knew leaving as Bush Hager’s co-host was going to a difficult decision.
“Certain relationships are one in a million, and this is,” she told Bush Hager. “And that’s why it’s hard because saying goodbye to something that’s not working, something’s that tired, something you don’t want, is easy. But saying goodbye to something that’s amazing is hard.
“It weighed a lot on me. I went back and forth and back and forth, and then I thought to myself, I think this decade I’m going to have to start choosing.”
As Bush Hager noted, there are still some fun times to be had before Hoda moves on to the next phase of her life and career.
“You see those tears. You see those faces of sadness, it’s because you are so beloved and you’ve made every single one of us feel adored, and we just can’t imagine life without you.
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