Hoda Kotb Announces She Is Leaving Today Show After 17 Years to Focus on Her Kids: ‘Right Decision but Painful’

Kotb will no longer anchor the show but will remain on staff as she shifts to focus on daughters Haley and Hope, who has health issues

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Hoda Kotb is bidding farewell to Today show anchoring duties after 17 years.

“As I write this, my heart is all over the map,” the journalist wrote in a letter to staff of the NBC morning show, shared Thursday, Sept. 26. “I know I’m making the right decision, but it’s a painful one. And you all are the reason why. They say two things can be right at the same time, and I’m feeling that so deeply right now. I love you and it’s time for me to leave the show.”

Explaining her reasoning, Kotb added in part, “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.”

She’ll stay in her current role until the beginning of 2025. But she won’t be absent from the network entirely after the new year; Kotb will remain on in some capacity, writing, “Happily and gratefully, I plan to remain a part of the NBC family, the longest work relationship I’ve been lucky enough to hold close to my heart.”

“I’ll be around. How could I not? Family is family and you all will always be a part of mine,” Kotb said.

Kotb is the co-anchor of NBC News’ Today alongside Savannah Guthrie, and the co-host of Today‘s fourth hour alongside Jenna Bush Hager.

She and Guthrie, 52, made history as the first-ever pair of female co-hosts of the popular morning talk show.

Kotb was the first host of Today‘s fourth-hour broadcast at 10 a.m. in September 2007, and was joined by co-host Kathie Lee Gifford in April 2008. Hager became Kotb’s co-host in August 2019 following Gifford’s departure.

Hoda Kotb on the Today show Feb. 29, 2024.Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty

She was named co-anchor of Today in January 2018 following Matt Lauer’s ousting amid allegations of his sexual misconduct.

Kotb has shared her journey to motherhood on the show and on her social media.

After a breast-cancer diagnosis in 2007 left her unable to conceive, she adopted a daughter, Haley Joy, in 2017. The TV personality’s family grew in 2019 with the adoption of her second daughter, Hope Catherine. She shares the two girls with her ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman.

While Today films in Manhattan, Kotb and her daughters recently moved to a house in the suburbs where Haley, 7, and Hope, 4, have their own rooms.

“They’re so excited to have their own space,” the mother of two explained Today. “They’re excited about a reading chair, they’re excited about having a beanbag chair, and their bed — that kind of stuff.”

Moving to a new home in a new community also had its fair share of challenges.

“It’s all new — new kids, new school, new things, new everything,” added Kotb. “It’s funny because all I could think of was I want my house for the kids to feel warm and cozy and a place where they want to hang. And that’s it.”

“I want my kids to feel grass on their feet, and play in the yard, and ride bikes down the street, and run up and down the stairs,” she told PEOPLE in an exclusive interview about the move. “I just see that life for them in this perfect house in this beautiful little town where I know they’ll be able to blossom into beautiful, independent, strong women.”

The girls stayed home while Kotb was in Paris for last month’s 2024 Summer Olympics but cheered on their mom and Team USA.

In February 2023, Kotb was absent from Today for two weeks when Hope experienced a medical crisis that landed her in the intensive care unit (ICU) for several days and in the hospital for more than a week.

“We had a scary stretch,” Kotb told PEOPLE this past March. “Any parent who’s been through a scary thing with their child understands. It’s like you just can’t believe that your child’s sick. You can’t believe that there’s nothing you can do. You can’t believe that no matter what you do, you can’t will it away or protect her, or all the things that we’re supposed to be doing as parents. And it’s a position I’ve never found myself in.”

When the family finally returned home, they began settling into a longer-term journey of managing Hope’s health. (Because of Hope’s young age, Kotb decided not to get specific about her daughter’s diagnosis, but she shared at the time that they were consistently monitoring her around the clock to safeguard her well-being.)

Months in, “things have stabilized,” Kotb told PEOPLE, adding that she hired extra help to balance the new medical demands with her highly unusual and rigid work schedule. Her top priority was “trying to make everything normal,” she said at the time: “It’s really tricky, because I don’t want Hope to get labeled. She’s a kid who is so vibrant, and most days everything is totally fine. I don’t want people to look at her differently.”