Savannah Guthrie is ready to return to work.
A month after undergoing vocal cord surgery, the anchor, 54, virtually called into Tuesday’s “Today Show” broadcast.
Guthrie reunited with fellow co-hosts Craig Melvin, Jenna Bush Hager, Carson Daly, Al Roker and Sheinelle Jones, holding up a dry-erase board that read “Love you.”
Then, the journalist said to the camera: “You know what? I think it’d be easier for me to just talk.”
In December, Guthrie announced she would be stepping away from the talk show to undergo vocal surgery.
“I am still on vocal rest, but I’m allowed to talk for five to 10 minutes every hour,” Guthrie explained on Tuesday.
“Savannah sounds good,” Jones, 47, chimed in, to which Guthrie teased back, “This is my new voice, or my old voice but my new voice.”
“Sounds the same,” Roker, 71, added. However, Melvin, 46, disagreed, noting: “No, you sound markedly better!”
“I think the good news is that it worked,” Guthrie answered. “And Sheinelle knows, she went through this and had this surgery, it’s kind of slow recovery. You’re allowed to talk and if you talk too much — which is a real risk for me — you start to feel it, so you just have to take it easy.”
Daly, 52, jokingly inquired if Guthrie had taken her new vocal cords for a “test drive” to yell at her and husband Michael Feldman’s two kids: Vale, 11, and Charley, 9, yet.
“Actually, yes,” Guthrie gushed. “A long weekend will bring that out, especially when Mike had to travel. It finally got there.”
The television personality revealed she will officially return to “Today” on Monday, Jan. 26.
Guthrie will, however, appear on Friday’s broadcast to share her journey of vocal cord surgery.
Before signing off, the mom of two shared some “funny gifts” she’s received while recovering.
One was a mug that said: “Sorry, I can’t talk right now. I’m on vocal rest” and another cup that read: “Don’t make me use my Mahjong voice.”
Guthrie first shared news of her time off in mid-December.
“Some of you have noticed that my voice has been very scratchy and started to crack a little bit,” Guthrie began on air. “Well, I have found out what it is. I have vocal nodules, and I also have a polyp. It’s not a big, big deal, but I am going to have to have a surgery in the new year and be off for a couple of weeks, so this is my last day for a little while.”
She added: “This has been going on for years, honestly, so to have a solution.”
Guthrie teased that viewers even began to suspect that she was having “the world’s longest head cold.”
However, she’s “really excited” to have gotten to the root of the problem.
“Totally silent,” she had said about her recovery process. “Christmas coming early for my family!”
Jones herself went through the same surgery.
“The silver lining is you have permission to be still. The house gets quiet, the kids are gonna want to help you out,” she expressed. “A lot of the greats have done it, maybe you’ll come out singing like, I don’t know, Celine Dion.”
“Well, you know, it’s really funny, I used to sing,” Guthrie recounted. “Then I couldn’t sing anymore, and then I couldn’t speak anymore. So who knows? Guys, the tour is happening in 2026.”
In 2019, the media personality underwent eye surgery after her son accidentally threw a sharp toy train at her.
“The retinal tear had deteriorated sharply, and I lost my vision. And that’s what happens if you don’t fix this: You lose your sight,” she told People at the time. “I was hoping that they weren’t going to get in there and see, ‘Oh, it’s worse than we thought. We can’t fix it.’ That was probably the lowest I felt, because I was just really scared.”
On Tuesday, hours after appearing on “Today,” Guthrie took to her Instagram Stories to share Charley’s reaction to her new voice.
After asking Charley, “How does mommy sound,” he said “Weird.”
Her son added that Guthrie doesn’t sound like she normally does “at all.”
“Not even close,” he quipped.
“A good sounding duck but just different,” Charley added, to which Guthrie answered, “Well, I’m still working on it.”
