Hoda Kotb got candid about experiencing some of the “lowest moments” in her life.
“I went through a divorce and breast cancer simultaneously, and I remembered in that time barely functioning, and I was thinking to myself, like, ‘Is this it? Is this how it goes?’” Kotb, 59, revealed to cohost Jenna Bush Hager during a Thursday, October 19 episode of the Today show. “I was thinking about some of my lowest moments during that time what was contributing to all of it was I was in horrible health, and I didn’t care about that piece of it, and you don’t realize how bad it gets and then you’re compounding it, your health gets worse, because you’re not well, and [it] went on and on.”
Less than one year after the Emmy winner shared that she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy in 2007, Kotb revealed she had split from then-husband Burzis Kanga after three years of marriage. Nearly 15 years later, Kotb admitted she wished she did things differently during that time period.
“You realize when you’re on solid ground again, and you look back, and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t take an hour for myself,’ there were all the things I never ever did that I am doing today that make such a difference,” she explained at the time.
Although Kotb quickly bounced back physically from her mastectomy, the post-surgery drugs she took prevented her from getting pregnant.
“I was in my room, and I just sobbed. I thought, ‘Well, that’s that, isn’t it?’ Like, you almost blame yourself. ‘Why didn’t I do this? Why didn’t I do that?’” she recalled to Good Housekeeping in 2022 after finding out about her fertility news. “So I just pushed it away, because the reality seemed impossible to bear. How do you survive knowing you can’t have what you desire and what you feel like you actually physically need?”
Nearly five years after the tragic news, Kotb began dating Joel Schiffman and the duo adopted daughters Haley and Hope in 2017 and 2019, respectively. (Schiffman, 65, and Kotb called it quits in January 2022.) The news anchor has been very open about criticism she got about choosing to adopt children in her 50s.
“I will never forget this. I got a letter that was addressed to me in somebody’s handwriting to my house,” she recalled during an April episode of the Today show. “I opened the letter, and it was something along the lines of, ‘How dare you [be] bringing a child into this world at that age. Don’t you know what you are doing to that child?’ It went on and on and it took my breath away because that actually was my ouch [moment]. I was scared. I was like, ‘Is this something that is smart for me to do? Am I helping or am I ultimately harming?’ I thought about that.”
However, Kotb turned to her own upbringing as a way to deal with all of the negative feedback.
“My dad passed when I was in college. And I remember thinking, ‘We have our parents for a [certain] period of time.’ I know the foundation he left. I know it was worth every second of that time,” she explained. “So, I thought about that too. It can hit you in a place where you’re the most vulnerable.”
