Hoda Kotb Explains Reason for Leaving ‘Today’ to Be with Her Kids (Exclusive)

Hoda Kotb has a nickname. “They call me Hodini because I always leave the party early,” she says. “Look, sometimes you miss a lot! People will be like, ‘Guess who showed up and sang?’ And I’m like, ‘Wait, what? I left before that.’” But the Today anchor, 60, says she’s generally comfortable with her choices. “It’s got its pluses and minuses, but it serves me properly,” she says. “So it works for me.”

There was perhaps no clearer example of leaving the party early than Kotb’s shocking Sept. 26 announcement that she would be departing the Today show after 17 years and 25 years total working for NBC. “I’ve kind of been contemplating, wondering, thinking about what I wanted this next chunk of my life to look like as I turned 60. And I like adventure, I like new beginnings. I’m a sunrise person and not a sunset person, and I was wondering, what does it look like for me?”

The decision to depart the coveted role anchoring alongside Savannah Guthrie and cohosting the 10 a.m. hour with Jenna Bush Hager comes after Kotb had suffered through a year of personal turmoil, after her younger daughter Hope, just 5, experienced a sudden medical crisis in Feb. 2023, which left the family searching for answers and working on long-term medical care solutions. (Kotb declines to share the specific ailment out of privacy concerns.)

In the last six months, Hope’s situation has greatly stabilized, and Kotb moved Hope and big sister Hailey, 7, out of their Upper West Side apartment to a home in Westchester where they can experience “being barefoot and on grass,” with a yard and a swingset. “We’re in a place where Hope is thriving. She is improving, we’re watching her, and I think that as time goes on, we’ll have a better handle on it, but we’re already seeing great differences,” says Kotb, who looks visibly more at ease than she did when discussing the situation with PEOPLE in Feb. 2024.  “We have really excellent care, I have people who are helping us out. I feel like she is finding steady footing.” 

But even as Hope’s situation improved, Kotb agonized over the demands on her time. Kotb first became a mother at 54 via adoption; when she welcomed her second child via adoption two years later, she ended up extending her maternity leave, angst ridden over her return to work.

“I’ve had yearnings, and you know when something’s pulling you? It’s like you either go toward it or you shove it down and say, ‘Nope, this is the way. I’m going to stay here because it’s safe,’” she says. “It does make more sense to stay at NBC. I’m financially secure and I would have job security. I mean, why would you ever not do that? But I’ve been watching my kids and I was thinking to myself, I wonder what I’m missing?”

Now that Hailey is in second grade, and Hope is in Kindergarten, she sees time flying by.

“I knew that I wanted this decade to be different. I looked at my time like a pie. I was like, this is how much time I get, and now what am I going to do with it and how am I going to carve it up? And I wanted it to be filled with more of them.”

After years of juggling and dealing with mom guilt, Kotb says she was ready for that change. “There’s the guilt you carry because you can’t be 100% at work and 100% at home. Something has to give if you want excellence. If you’re going to be excellent at work, something has to give at home. And if you want to be excellent at home, I mean excellent, and do all the things, something has to give at work. It can’t be equal,” she says.

Kotb is stoic about the job she’s leaving behind. “Whoever’s interested in that seat, and it’s maybe the best seat in television, I think the best advice I have is to be 1,000% who you are, because that’s really the key,” Kotb says. “And the other thing, too, is sometimes to me, part of the magic is to be able to delight in the person sitting next to you. It’s such a small thing, but sometimes when you’re with someone, if you just let them shine. Give everyone a second, because who wants to be the person at the cocktail party who’s talking all the time?” 

Looking to the future, Kotb will finally have time to actually go to a cocktail party if she wants.

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“To have kind of a social life will be new for me,” says Kotb, who says she has almost never taken off more than a couple days of work at a time, and has woken up at 3:30 a.m. every day including weekends now, for years. “I went to a barbecue and I was up till 9 p.m. and I felt like I was on a bender. I go, ‘I’ve got to go.’ And everybody’s like, ‘Why?’ I go, ‘Because it’s 9 p.m.’ But I thought, you know what? I’m not going to be playing beat the clock all the time anymore.”

But most of all, she’s looking forward to time with her girls — even if they’re a little impatient for the start date.

For more on Hoda Kotb, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribe here.

“I was like, ‘Guess what? Mommy is going to be able to take you to school now,’” Kotb recalls of breaking the news of her career transition to the kids when it was a done deal the Tuesday before this interview. “They said, ‘Wednesday?’ I go, ‘No, honey, not Wednesday.’ ‘Well, Thursday?’ I go, ‘No, no, no, honey, it’s going to be like after January.’ ‘After my birthday?’ They were horrified,” she says with a laugh. “At this point it’s so far away. ‘It’s after Halloween?’ I go, ‘Yeah, honey, it’s after Halloween!’ A month might seem like forever to them but it’ll sink in eventually.”