A family affair! Hoda Kotb and Joel Schiffman’s daughters, Haley and Hope, will be involved in their upcoming wedding.
“My daughters are going to be [there],” the Hoda & Jenna & Friends host, 55, told Us Weekly exclusively on Monday, February 3, while promoting her and Jenna Bush Hager’s new live studio set. “The girls are definitely going to do something cute. I don’t know, walk down the aisle I think.”
The I Really Needed This Today author, who got engaged to the financier, 61, in November, went on to say that she wants her cohost, 38, to walk down with them. “Jenna keeps going, ‘Am I wearing a flower girl dress?’” Kotb joked with Us.
The Oklahoma native adopted Hayley in February 2017 and welcomed Hope to the family two years later. Kotb returned to the Today show five months after her youngest’s April 2019 arrival and told Us exclusively about the decision.
“There was probably a minute there where I was thinking to myself, ‘I’ve worked for, like, 30-plus years of my life and now I get this. Do I really want to be working while I’m doing this?’” the Daytime Emmy winner explained in October. “But I think at the end of the day I realized I actually love work, and I want my kids to know that work is an awesome thing.”
However, Kotb is intentional about unplugging when she’s at home with her girls. “I am not picking up my phone,” she told Us at the time. “I am not going to do that. … I try and live that way and I feel that it’s important for me.”
Motherhood changed “the focus of life,” the You Are My Happy author said on Tuesday — and the same goes for Hager.
“It’s re-shifted every single [angle],” the Texas native, who shares Mila, 6, Poppy, 4, and Hal, 6 months, with husband Henry Hager, told Us. “Every day, there’s a new realization [or] something wonderful. Like, I can’t believe how much fun I have reading to Mila and Poppy.”
Hoda & Jenna & Friends’ new studio launches on Thursday, February 6. “This is like if you’ve ever rented a new apartment or got a new house and you put the key in the door and walked in and went, ‘Oh, my gosh,’” Kotb told Us of the move. “That’s what this feels like for us professionally. There’s not a professional equivalent, this is as close as you’re going to get.”
With reporting by Marc Lupo
