It’s time to say goodbye to Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager’s fourth hour.
The friends and co-hosts had their last show on Friday, as Kotb, 60, left the daily live broadcast after 26 years at NBC.
“Brought to you by Kleenex,” Bush Hager stated to the live studio audience at the start of the show.
In honor of their last show together, Bush Hager read an emotional letter about their time as co-hosts. Kotb’s family and friends were in the audience — including her two daughters Haley 7, and Hope, 5, sister, brother, sister-in-law, nieces and her closest friends.
“Dearest Hoda,” she began. “Five years …. more than 1500 shows … 90,000 hours … 9,000 commercial breaks filled with Shaboozey, Beyoncé and constant laughter and soul affirming conversations. From Vegas to NOLA (three times!) from Austin to Quebec … to our home — this home Studio 1A, which will always be ours. Mine and yours.”
“From a global pandemic … to two maternity leaves! Five children,” she went on. “I’ll never forget sitting in your dressing room telling you I was pregnant with Hal … then a month later you FaceTimed me introducing me to baby Hope. They were right on time!”
She shared what she has learned from Hoda throughout their time as friends, calling the journalist a “hero.”
“You have taught me to look really look into the eyes, the hearts of our guest … and listen, really listen! And now, my dearest — you are teaching us the most important lesson of all — how to say goodbye with grace,” she continued, tearing up. “Viewers have traveled miles, from other states to declare their love on poster board, every single guest has gotten to share their ‘Hoda story.’ How you have made them feel seen, and heard.”
“Thank you Hoda for everything you have taught me, everything you’ve given me: all the hugs, all the heart all the laughs, all the love,” Bush Hager concluded. “I will miss you my friend. But I love you and am so proud! Love always and forever, Jenna.”
On Friday’s program, Jimmy Fallon also showed up and surprised Kotb with a piece of the famous Rockefeller Center peacock carpet framed.
Kotb and Bush Hager, 43, have hosted “Today with Hoda & Jenna” together since 2019. That year, NBC announced that Hager would replace Kathy Lee Gifford on the fourth hour of “Today” after the latter’s departure earlier that year.
The pair quickly became one of daytime television’s most beloved unions.
In April 2024, the co-hosts celebrated their fifth anniversary of the show, with Kotb and Bush Hager fondly reminiscing about how their working relationship has turned into a life-long friendship.
“We started off as colleagues/friends. We didn’t really know each other. Over the five years, there’s such a deep understanding of the other’s soul and purpose, We have traveled down these roads together,” Kotb shared on the air. “A lot of times friendships don’t grow, you talk about the old days. Not ours. Like every day [there’s] something different, something new, something we’re learning.”
Bush Hager added that they had become so close that it became second nature to refer to themselves as “we.”
“We say ‘we’ for everything. I’ll tell mom friends, ‘We’re waiting ‘til 8th grade for phones.’ They’re like, ‘You and [Bush Hager’s husband] Henry?’ I’m like, ‘No, Hoda and me,’” Bush Hager quipped at the time. “But to have a ‘we’ is so profound at this stage in life. Everybody looks for a partner that will grow with them, and here we are.”
Kotb described her co-host as “my closest friend in adulthood that I didn’t know that I needed,” while Bush Hager gushed that they “love each other.”
“We are really good friends, and so it makes work easy and natural and fun because I adore who I am next to,” Bush Hager reiterated, adding that “sitting next to [Hoda] every single day for the last five years has been the best, best privilege.”
Kotb started in 2007 as a host of “Today’s” first fourth hour weekday morning and reflected on her decades-long career with the network in an emotional letter after announcing her departure early last year.
“My time at NBC has been the longest professional love affair of my life,” she penned at the time. “But only because you’ve been beside me on this 26-year adventure. Looking back, the math is nuts. 26 years at NBC News — Ten years at ‘Dateline,’ seven on the seven o’clock hour, sixteen on the ten o’clock hour.”
“I’m picturing your faces and your families and all the ways you’ve lifted me up and inspired me,” Kotb noted. “That’s my heart singing. So many of my professional relationships have become some of my most cherished friendships.”
Revealing she had been thinking of the move “for a while,” she said she was truly ready for a change in her life.
“My sixtieth birthday celebration on the Plaza felt like a shift,” Kotb concluded. “Like a massive, joyful YES, you are! I saw it all so clearly: My broadcast career has been beyond meaningful, a new decade of my life lies ahead, and now my daughters and my mom need and deserve a bigger slice of my time pie. I will miss you all desperately, but I’m ready and excited.”
Bush Hager confessed after receiving the news that she reached out to her dad, former president George W. Bush, to talk through Kotb leaving the show.
“I called him last night. First, he thought something really awful [happened], like a lost loved one, because of how emotional I was,” she shared. “And he said, ‘Oh, she’s leaving cause it’s time and you’re gonna be fine. It’s your turn. It’s okay.’”
Kotb stood up and clapped in response to hearing Bush’s comments.
“It’s your turn. It’s your turn,” she said, reiterating the ex-Commander in Chief.
“And whoever sits in this seat is going to have the easiest job in the world cause they’re sitting next to you,” Kotb said to Bush Hager while crying. “The only thing they have to do is not laugh so hard they pee their pants. That’s it. They just have to hang on.”
