Today, Kathie Lee Gifford is sending off her old pal.
During Hoda Kotb’s last episode of “Today with Hoda & Jenna” on Friday, the journalist got a surprise visit from her former co-host.
At first, Gifford, 71, appeared in a video message from her home in Tennessee under the pretense that she couldn’t make it in-person. Shortly after the clip ended, the author appeared onstage to say a proper goodbye as Kotb, 60, sat with her jaw dropped.
“I love you so much that I was thinking to myself, ‘I sure hope Kath comes,’” the anchor admitted to Gifford. “I’m so happy that you’re here.”
“I have a message for you,” the actress said before singing “The Best Is Yet to Come.”
Kotb and Gifford hosted “Today with Kathie Lee & Hoda” from 2008 until Gifford’s departure in 2019. Gifford was replaced by Jenna Bush Hager, who has remained Kotb’s co-host since.
Gifford recalled how she and Kotb bonded before they teamed up for the fourth hour show.
“I fell in love with Hoda at lunch,” she said about their first introduction.
As it turns out, Gifford only signed on to the show for a year — but she quickly had a change of heart.
“My problem is I fall in love, and I fell in love with Hoda,” she revealed. “And I said, ‘I don’t want to leave her.’ Every time I was with Hoda, the one thing I had in common with you and with Regis (Philbin) — two very, very different people — I look forward every single day to being with you both.”
“I’ve always said she’s sunshine in a bottle, isn’t she, everybody?” added Gifford.
And while working closely together for 11 years, Gifford found out just the type of person Kotb really is.
“You proved to me that you’re a fearless person,” she told the author. “You are, because she didn’t do what she does now at the beginning. She was world-renowned journalist, but she didn’t trust her performing instincts, and that wasn’t going to work with me.”
As Gifford, Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager toasted their beloved friend, Gifford stated, “I think I want to send her off with what she knows from my heart means most to me is that I’m sending you off with a prayer,” before reciting a pair of prayers.
“May you walk into the most joyful, prosperous, purposeful time in your life,” she concluded.
The pair has remained close since Gifford’s exit, with the television personality becoming emotional over Kotb’s September announcement that she planned to leave “Today.”
“Bittersweet news as my dear friend @hodakotb steps away from the Today Show,” she posted on X at the time. “Her warmth, laughter, and incredible spirit have brightened our mornings and touched countless hearts. Here’s to new adventures!”
When Gifford announced in 2018 that she would be leaving “Today,” Kotb gushed about what it was like to work with her longtime co-host.
“I always felt sitting next to you was like a master class in this broadcasting business, because nobody, nobody, nobody does it like you do it,” she said. “Nobody ever has and nobody ever will. You are all by yourself. And I think everything is contagious. Your fearlessness is contagious.”
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.
“My time at NBC has been the longest professional love affair of my life,” she penned. “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.”
