Hoda Kotb isn’t taking a step back from work amid her daughter’s ongoing health issues.
Despite reports claiming the “Today” anchor “has been reconfiguring her approach to work” to be more of a “hands-on” mom, a source close to the show says Kotb isn’t cutting back.
“There’s zero truth to this,” the insider tells Page Six exclusively.
The clarification comes after Kotb took a nearly three-week hiatus from the NBC morning show after her 3-year-old daughter, Hope, was hospitalized.
Although viewers were left in the dark about the reasoning for Kotb’s absence at first, she later revealed Hope “was in the ICU for a few days and in the hospital for a little more than a week.”
While she hasn’t shared the nature of Hope’s health scare, the 58-year-old recently revealed she is “getting better.”
“To watch her go through a difficult time at just 3 years old is really tough for any parent because you’re helpless,” Kotb said this week during an episode of Southern Living’s “Biscuits & Jam” podcast.
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“But I think you realize just how incredibly resilient and strong she is. I think sometimes you learn life’s lessons from the most amazing places.”
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Although Kotb, who is also mom to 6-year-old daughter Haley, was a worried mess through it all, her young daughter was able to look on the bright side of things.
“Hope said, ‘You know, I think God put me here to teach people things,’” she recalled from their hospital stay. “I said, ‘What? What? What?’ She said, ‘Yeah, because my brain’s pretty big, so I think I’m supposed to teach people things.’”
She gushed, “It’s like, [we] learn from our kids. And all we have to do is model; we don’t have to teach anything. Just be you … and then learn from them.”
Kotb and her ex Joel Schiffman adopted Haley in 2017 and Hope two years later. The pair split in 2022 after eight years together.
