Hoda Kotb has re-entered the dating scene. A few days after revealing that she went on her first date in two years, Kotb shared an update on her burgeoning romance. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Kotb said she met the man through friend and Today Show colleague Jenna Bush Hager.
“Jenna is like, ‘How did I do?’ because she wants to go to Heaven. Apparently, if you match three people up [you get to go],” Kotb joked about Hager, calling her “a great picker.”
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“I had a great time… I had a great time on our date. I loved it,” she gushed. “There has been a second one already. Hey, that’s how it goes… We’ll have our third coming up. It’s really fun.”
After splitting from her longtime partner, Joel Schiffman, in January 2022, Kotb spoke about her reasons for wanting to return to the dating scene. “Life is beautiful. Try things, go out, get out of your house and your apartment. I feel like life is meant to be experienced and [you should] step out into it,” she said. “I love it.”
Rather than focusing on romantic love alone, Kotb hopes she will remember her passion for living throughout her lifetime. “I am hoping that I keep growing. I feel like life is about repotting. I feel like I’ve repotted so many times in my life. When you’re picking up, it’s like, ‘Oh my God.’ Roots are up in the air. I’m like, ‘Am I dying?’ And then you get submerged into fertile ground,” she said. “… It happened when I went from this job, or this relationship, or this family situation. You’re constantly doing it.”
“I just hope and pray in my lifetime I’m that way into my 90s. Repotting should be something that we’re doing all the time,” Kotb added. “The other thing we should be doing all the time is falling in love with everything. A puppy, a restaurant, a book, a scent, it doesn’t matter. My mom did that… That’s what life is about to me.”
As Kotb, 59, told Today viewers in 2022, there had been “a lot of prayerful and meaningful discussions” between her and Schiffman, 65, before they decided they were better off as friends. There was no single event that triggered the split, she explained.
“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,” Kotb said.
As for Schiffman, a financier, Kotb only spoke highly of him. “He’s a great guy. He’s a very kind and loving person, and I feel privileged to have spent eight years with him,” she said. “We are both good and we are both kind of going on our way and our path. We’ll be good parents to those two lovely kids.”
