In the present day, Kathie Lee Gifford is sending off her outdated pal.
Throughout Hoda Kotb’s final episode of “Today with Hoda & Jenna” on Friday, the journalist obtained a shock go to from her former co-host.
At first, Gifford, 71, appeared in a video message from her dwelling in Tennessee beneath the pretense that she couldn’t make it in-person. Shortly after the clip ended, the writer appeared onstage to say a correct goodbye as Kotb, 60, sat together 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 stated earlier than singing “The Best Is Yet to Come.”
Kotb and Gifford hosted “Today with Kathie Lee & Hoda” from 2008 till Gifford’s departure in 2019. Gifford was changed by Jenna Bush Hager, who has remained Kotb’s co-host since.
Gifford recalled how she and Kotb bonded earlier than they teamed up for the fourth hour present.
“I fell in love with Hoda at lunch,” she stated about their first introduction.
Because it seems, Gifford solely signed on to the present for a 12 months — however she rapidly had a change of coronary 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 whereas working carefully collectively for 11 years, Gifford discovered simply the kind of individual Kotb actually is.
“You proved to me that you’re a fearless person,” she instructed the writer. “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 buddy, Gifford acknowledged, “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,” earlier than reciting a pair of prayers.
“May you walk into the most joyful, prosperous, purposeful time in your life,” she concluded.
The pair has remained shut since Gifford’s exit, with the tv character changing into emotional over Kotb’s September announcement that she deliberate to go away “Today.”
“Bittersweet news as my dear friend @hodakotb steps away from the Today Show,” she posted on X on the time. “Her warmth, laughter, and incredible spirit have brightened our mornings and touched countless hearts. Here’s to new adventures!”
When Gifford introduced in 2018 that she can be leaving “Today,” Kotb gushed about what it was prefer to work together 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 stated. “Nobody ever has and nobody ever will. You are all by yourself. And I think everything is contagious. Your fearlessness is contagious.”
Kotb began in 2007 as a number of “Today’s” first fourth hour weekday morning and mirrored on her decadeslong profession with the community in an emotional letter after saying 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 7o’clock hour, sixteen on the 10 o’clock hour.”
