A big, happy family! Hoda Kotb gave fans a rare glimpse of how her daughter Hope is recovering after her recent hospital stay.
The Today show correspondent, 58, shared a family photo via Instagram on Tuesday, June 6. Fellow journalist Karen Swensen and her daughter, Catherine, joined Kotb and her two kids — Haley, 6, and Hope, 3 — on the floor in the sweet pic. She captioned the upload with a simple red heart emoji.
The group was all smiles in the snap, which came three months after Kotb revealed that her youngest daughter was hospitalized. After missing two weeks of the NBC morning show, the broadcaster filled in viewers on her reason for being off the air.
“My youngest [daughter], Hope, was in the ICU for a few days and in the hospital for a little more than a week,” she explained on the March 6 episode. “I’m so grateful she’s home. … I was waiting for that day to come. And we are watching her closely. I’m just so happy.”
Kotb got emotional as she spoke to cohost Savannah Guthrie about the personal matter. “You know what I realized, too, Savannah? When your child is ill, the amount of gratitude you can have for people who helped you out … I’m grateful for the doctors at Weill Cornell who were amazing and the nurses,” she said. “And I’m grateful to my family.”
The Oklahoma native adopted both of her children amid her romance with Joel Schiffman. The twosome began dating in 2013 and got engaged six years later. In January 2022, however, the former CBS News anchor announced that she and Schiffman, 65, had called it quits.
While Hope recovered, a source exclusively told Us Weekly in March that Kotb’s ex-fiancé was a supportive presence. “Hoda has dropped everything and focused on being there for her youngest — by her hospital bed — and taking care of anything she could need,” the insider added.
Shortly after the little one’s health scare, Kotb reflected on facing criticism for her choice to adopt as an older parent. “I will never forget this. I got a letter that was addressed to me in somebody’s handwriting to my house,” she recalled on an April episode of Today. “I opened the letter, and it was something along the lines of, ‘How dare you [be] bringing a child into this world at that age. Don’t you know what you are doing to that child?'”
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She continued: “It went on and on and it took my breath away because that actually was my ouch [moment]. I was scared. I was like, ‘Is this something that is smart for me to do? Am I helping or am I ultimately harming?’ I thought about that.”
Despite the negative message, the I Really Needed This Today author remembered lessons she’d learned from her late father. “I know the foundation he left. I know it was worth every second of that time,” she said. “So, I thought about that too. It can hit you in a place where you’re the most vulnerable.”
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