Family comes first.
Hoda Kotb revealed that she left “Today” earlier this year because her 6-year-old daughter Hope has Type 1 diabetes.
“As anyone with a child who has Type 1 (knows), especially a little kid, you’re constantly watching, you’re constantly monitoring, you’re constantly checking, which is what I did all the time when I was at ‘Today.’ You’re distracted,” Kotb, 60, said on Wednesday as she returned to the NBC morning show as a guest.
“You just get a priority check in your life,” Hoda told her former co-anchors Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin. “I can be here and sweating what’s happening to Hope in the morning and in the night, or I can be there and feel relief that I can see.”
Kotb stepped away from “Today” in January after seven years as a co-anchor and almost 30 years at NBC News.
The famous journalist, who adopted daughters Hope and Haley, 7, also gave an update on Hope’s health.
“Hope is fine for most of the day. There are just moments where you have to watch her,” Hoda explained. “I was totaling it up — five minutes at breakfast, five minutes at lunch, five minutes at dinner, sometimes overnight. Add that up, that’s a half-hour. So for 23 and a half hours, she’s every other kid. So I try to remember that.”
Type 1 diabetes is a chronic condition where the pancreas makes little or no insulin, according to the Mayo Clinic. There is no cure.
In an interview with People published Wednesday, Kotb explained how she couldn’t be fully available for Hope’s needs while she was busy with her “Today” schedule that included waking up everyday at 3:15 a.m.
“I really wanted to and needed to be here to watch over her. So, whenever she needs anything, and it can happen at night, multiple times, I’m up — I’m up up up,” Kotb stated. “But I would never, ever want Hope to one day grow up and say, ‘Oh, my mom left her job because [of me].’ It wasn’t that alone. But if you look at it cumulatively, it was a part of that decision.”
Kotb also called Hope a “trooper” and said her youngest daughter is under “constant care” and being monitored 24/7.
“She was getting shots — four or five a day — every day for a year. Now she is getting them less frequently because we have some other means to get her what she needs, but there’s a lot to it,” said Kotb. “Some kids can have sweets and she can’t. If she’s up in the night, we have to take care of her at night.”
Despite Hope’s diagnosis, Kotb said she’s “a happy, healthy, rambunctious, amazing kid, and we have to watch her. Diabetes is a part of her, but not all of her. I hope it shapes her but never defines her.”
Kotb previously took a 1-month leave of absence from “Today” in early 2023 as Hope was hospitalized and in the ICU.
During her return to “Today,” Kotb also shut down the rumors that she’s taking over Kelly Clarkson’s NBC talk show.
“Delete. Delete. That’s not true,” she told Guthrie, 53, and Melvin, 46, on Wednesday.
“I want to ask you all a real question,” she added. “Do you think that if I ever came back to TV … do you know the only place I would ever come back is? Right here, this is the spot. There’s no place like home.”
Kotb confirmed that she’ll be on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” next week — but just “for fun.”
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