There are wedding bells ringing soon enough for Hoda Kotb and her longtime financier beau Joel Schiffman! The two lovebirds are engaged to be married, the Today show co-host confirmed on the morning show Monday.
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Kotb, 55, recalled for her co-hosts that Schiffman, 61, had proposed to her while they were having a romantic dinner on the beach, telling her, “Be my wife.”
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“My heart has literally been pounding,” she gushed, as per PEOPLE. “I was totally shocked. He had a good poker face.”
Kotb and Schiffman, who moved in together in 2016, have yet to tell the TV personalities’ daughters, 2-year-old Haley Joy and Hope Catherine, whom she just adopted in April.
“We’re still trying to figure out that part,” she explained.
This will be Kotb’s second marriage, having previously been married to ex-husband Burzis Kanga from 2005 to 2007, but the bride-to-be has made it clear her longtime beau is the love of her life. “He’s the guy that gives me butterflies at 50 years old,” she told PEOPLE in 2015 of Schiffman.
“It’s one of the most natural relationships I’ve ever been in,” she added. “I’m so happy, I really am. But you know sometimes you hate to jinx something. I’m like, ‘don’t jinx it!’”
Schiffman has also served as the father of Haley Joy, despite not legally being listed as the father on the adoption application so as to simplify the process, Kotb added to PEOPLE in 2017.
“I was afraid to even say it out loud, because then it felt so real,” she said of having her daughter call Schiffman her father. “I said, ‘Think about it for a day or a week or whatever.’ And he said, ‘I don’t need a day. Let’s get this journey going.’ At that point I blubbered like a baby. It was like the dam burst.”
“[He] has been so great,” Kotb added of her husband-to-be, who has an adult daughter from a previous relationship. “He’s such a great dad and a great influence.”
Congratulations to the happy couple!
Photo credit: Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
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