‘Today’ Alum Kathie Lee Gifford Says Late Husband Frank Is ‘Smiling’ After Children Are Engaged

Kathie Lee Gifford’s family is going to grow by two very soon. The 69-year-old former TODAY host visited her old stomping grounds while the morning talk show was filming in Nashville, where Gifford now resides. While there, she expressed her joy behind both her son and daughter getting engaged in the same year.

“The good news is I adore both of their partners,” Gifford said, as noted by People. She also speculated how her late husband, Frank, who passed away in 2015, would’ve taken the news. “It’s a new season, and I know Frank is smiling. He might have even had a little something to do with it.”

Gifford’s 29-year-old son, Cody, was engaged to his longtime girlfriend Erika Brown back in May. More recently, her 26-year-old daughter, Cassidy, had just become engaged this past Sunday to boyfriend Ben Wierda. To help celebrate the news, Gifford posted the news in a beaming Instagram post.

“So thrilled to announce that my beautiful daughter, @cassidygiff is engaged to a wonderful man, Ben @letsgetwierda,” the caption read.

Gifford’s kids aren’t the only ones in the family experience romance, either. It was revealed in August that Gifford herself was dating 56-year-old Randall “Randy” Cronk, who’s the president of the RMC Insurance Group.

The TODAY alum has also opened up recently about her late husband, and how his death didn’t come as a surprise.

“Frank died four years ago, and I was pretty good about that, because I was expecting it,” Gifford revealed. “Not as suddenly as it happened, but he’d been failing. He was one week shy of 85 when he passed. He was still in great shape, still working out. He could remember every single person he’d ever played football with on every team. But it was the recent memory things that were starting to happen.”

Gifford left TODAY back in April after 11 years. At the time, she said the hardest part of leaving the morning talk show was that she’d “fallen in love” with her co-host, Hoda Kotb, and had a deep emotional connection to the rest of her co-workers.

“I will be in love with every single person I worked here with — that’s the hard part,” Gifford said. “The leaving the job is not the hard part for me, it’s leaving the people.”