Hoda Kotb’s final Today episode is only a few weeks away, and NBC has a big celebration planned for her farewell broadcast.
“NBC is going all out,” an insider exclusively tells Closer. “There will be special guests, coworkers from her past, classic clips and big stars.”
NBC already announced that Hoda’s final episode will be called a “Hoda-bration,” with a live studio audience.
“There will be big surprises, lots of surprises that Hoda won’t even know about,” Jenna Bush Hager revealed during a December 18 episode of Today.
The special episode will take place on January 10, Hoda’s final day as a Today broadcaster.
“We just really cannot wait to celebrate and send you [off],” Jenna, 43, said. “I don’t know what’s gonna be happening with me because just talking about the ‘Hoda-bration’ brings tears to my eyes. So, we’re hoping we can do it and I can get out alive. But it’s gonna be a beautiful day. … We’re gonna start 2025 with an absolute bang.”
The source says fans can expect Hoda to be very emotional during her final episode.
“Hoda will be overwhelmed, but she deserves all the flowers,” the insider adds. “She’ll be in tears, that’s for sure.”
Hoda, 60, was in tears when she first made the announcement on September 26 that she would be leaving Today after 17 years.
“I decided that this is the right time for me to kind of move on,” the broadcaster, who shares daughters Haley and Hope with ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman, said on Today. “And then I thought about it — 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. I feel like we only have a finite amount of time.”
And each time she talks about her exit, it has become more and more sad for fans, who have loved watching her build an incredible career for herself on the talk show for more than a decade.
But Hoda admitted there’s one thing she definitely won’t miss about Today when she officially leaves the show — the 3:00 a.m. call time.
“No, I will not miss that,” Hoda confessed during an appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers on December 18. “Sometimes I push it to 3:15 but it usually goes off at 3:00.”
She will no doubt be able to sleep in a bit longer before taking her kids to school each morning once she leaves the show. But on the flip side, there is one big thing that both she and her children will miss about coming to the Today studio.
“I’ll tell you something about the NBC Commissary, I love the NBC Commissary,” she told Seth Meyers during the late-night talk show appearance. “In fact, my kids come to hang out or see me at work, the only thing they ask for is to go up to the ninth floor of the Commissary because it’s got a good spread.”
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