Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager have a plan in place for the 2024 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
“Last year, Hoda and I came up with this secret symbol, which was Hoda brushing her teeth with a finger,” Bush Hager, 43, stated on the Wednesday episode of “Today With Hoda & Jenna.”
Kotb, 60, added that the image was an “indicator that I was thinking of Jenna.”
This Thanksgiving will mark the final vacation that the fourth hour “Today” co-hosts rejoice on air as Kotb is about to exit the present in early 2025.
The anchor shared she has one other candy sign deliberate for the parade.
“I’ve been thinking, like, ‘What could it possibly be?’ And there’s only one thing it could be,” Kotb stated, noting she’ll be replicating a dance transfer from Matt Rogers’ “RockaFellaCenta” music video.
Within the observe, Rogers, 34, sings, “I wanna see Jenna Bush Hager come out the building / Because that’s where she works.” As he belts out the lyric within the music video, his “Las Culturistas” podcast co-host, Bowen Yang, shakes his arms as they dance with Kotb and Bush Hager.
“So, whenever I see Jenna, I go like this [dances],” she continued earlier than busting a transfer. Bush Hager echoed her bestie’s sentiments: “We do it together. It’s sort of our call sign.”
And Bush Hager is certain to remain glued to the tv after lacking Kotb’s gesture final yr.
“Our [Christmas] tree fell over at the beginning of the parade with all the stuff on it,” the anchor confessed. “I had paused [the parade] because I was looking for [Hoda’s signal], and somebody texted me and tons [social media users said], ‘Hey Jenna, go, go. She did it, she did it.’ So then, we got to watch.”
Bush Hager shared a candy shout-out on social media, posting a screenshot of Kotb pretending to wipe lipstick off her enamel from final yr’s parade broadcast.
“What a true one @hodakotb! Her secret sign!!!” she captioned her 2023 Instagram publish.
A month later, Rogers and Yang, 34, appeared on “Hoda & Jenna” to carry out their cheeky vacation observe reside.
“It’s the giving season, you guys. I’m giving you a theme song. I’m like, ‘What can I do to offer back to the culture?’” Rogers informed the duo when it got here to what impressed his observe. “I’m walking around Rockefeller Center, which is just the most majestic place in town. And I was like, ‘RockaFellaCenta.’ I think it just popped into my head. I was like, ‘Let me put this on a full-length album.’”
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 asserting her departure earlier this yr.
“My time at NBC has been the longest professional love affair of my life,” she penned on 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 famous. “That’s my heart singing. So many of my professional relationships have become some of my most cherished friendships.”
Although she’s been considering of the transfer “for a while,” she realized she’s actually prepared 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.”
The anchor then spoke candidly about her choice on air.
“I realized that it was time for me to turn the page at 60, and to try something new,” she stated by tears. “I remembered standing outside looking at these beautiful bunch of people with these gorgeous signs, and I thought, ‘This is what the top of the wave feels like for me.’ And I thought it can’t get better, and I decided that this is the right time for me to kind of move on.”
Kotb, who’s mother to daughters, Haley, 7, and Hope, 5, admitted that this pivot is supposed to assist her give attention to her household extra.
“Obviously I had my kiddos late in life, and I was thinking that they deserve a bigger piece of my time pie that I have,” she continued. “I feel like we only have a finite amount of time. And so, with all that being said, this is the hardest thing in the world.”
Craig Melvin will succeed her as Savannah Guthrie’s “Today” co-anchor, and the fourth hour will then turn into “Today With Jenna & Friends.” Rotating company will proceed to host till Kotb’s substitute is chosen.
The 98th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade airs on NBC and Peacock Thursday, November 28, at 8:30 a.m. ET.
