Jenna Bush Hager Gives Update on ‘Today’ Co-Host Hoda Kotb Following Breakup

Jenna Bush Hager is speaking out on how her Today Show co-host Hoda Kotb is doing since splitting from her longtime love, Joel Schiffman. Kotb and Schiffman went public with their relationship two years after they began dating in 2015, and became engaged in November 2019. They adopted two daughters, Haley and Hope, in February 2017 and April 2019, respectively. At the time of announcing the split earlier this year, Kotb said it was not new news.

“Joel and I have had a lot of prayerful and meaningful conversations over the holidays and we decided that we are better as friends and parents than we are as an engaged couple, so we decided we are going to start this new year on our new path as loving parents to our adorably delightful children and as friends,” she shared. “It’s not like something happened. They say sometimes relationships are meant to be there for a reason, a season or a lifetime, this was for a season.”

Luckily, she’s had the support of her TV family, namely Bush Hager. “I am proud of Hoda every single day,” Bush Hager said in a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight. “She’s filled with compassion and grace. I watch her come into her office every morning smiling at every single person.”

Bush Hagger adds that Kotb has been a great friend of hers outside of work. “[She] has treated me with such love and has been a mentor and now a really dear friend,” she said. “So it is no surprise [how she handled the breakup],” Bush Hager added. “She does everything in life with grace and compassion.”

Bush Hager also spoke of the close bond all of her work family have with one another, saying it’s just “part of the territory.” “I think we all are just so happy to have each other,” she said. “People say the Today show is a family and it seems like a cliché… but it’s true. Hoda is like a sister to me, a lovely, wonderful presence in my life… That is the truth. We have such a supportive force and I encourage people if they don’t have that in their workplace to build it, because that is what we have here,” Bush Hager continued.