I had a therapist once who cautioned me against the “what if” way of thinking. What if I never meet anyone? What if I never have enough money to buy a house? What if I never find a new job? In hindsight, I wasted so much time and energy worrying about these things: I got married, we bought a house, and I’m writing this article right now at a job I love. That’s why when I heard Hoda Kotb once say that she adopted the personal motto everything happens “right on time,” it really struck a chord. And now that the author and journalist has announced she’s leaving the Today show after 17 years, this couldn’t be more applicable to her life’s journey—and so many of her fans.
RELATED: 125 Positive Quotes That Will Turn Your Whole Day Around.
Kotb decided to exit Today shortly after her 60th birthday.
“I just thought the universe was speaking to me,” she said in an interview with The New York Times. “This is a time in life for looking inside you, and figuring out what your yearnings are, your callings — where or what direction you’re headed during this new decade.”
Kotb started her career in broadcast journalism immediately after college, “joining CBS in 1986 as a news assistant in her parents’ hometown of Cairo,” according to Biography. Her big break came in 1998 when she was hired as a correspondent for Dateline NBC. During this time, she covered some of the world’s most important events, including the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, Hurricane Katrina, and the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Biography notes.
Then, in 2007, Kotb was hired to host the fourth hour of Today alongside Kathie Lee Gifford and, later, Jenna Bush Hager. Finally, in 2018, Kotb was announced as the official co-anchor of Today with Savannah Guthrie.
Clearly, Kotb has the professional accolades to warrant her devoted fanbase, but it’s clear that people connect with her genuineness and how candid she’s been over the years.
Kotb was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 at age 43 and subsequently underwent a double mastectomy with reconstruction and a five-year course of treatment (her cancer went into remission shortly after her procedure). Kotb shared this entire journey, including the fact that she would not be able to carry children.
“I remember that my oncologist called and we were talking about freezing my eggs. She basically said that given my age and [my breast cancer treatment], it was pretty close to a dead end. I was in my room and I just sobbed,” she shared with Good Housekeeping in 2022. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s that, isn’t it?’ Like, you almost blame yourself. ‘Why didn’t I do this?’ ‘Why didn’t I do that?’ So I just pushed it away, because the reality seemed impossible to bear. How do you survive knowing you can’t have what you desire and what you feel like you actually physically need?”
Once Kotb was in good health, she and her ex-fiancé, Joel Schiffman, decided to adopt their first daughter, Haley, in 2017 and their second daughter, Hope, in 2020. Though Kotb was 53 and 55 when she adopted her children, she believes it happened “right on time.”
After adopting Haley, Kotb called her friend Robin Roberts, a fellow breast cancer survivor, to tell her the news.
“I said to Robin, ‘Can you believe I’m going to be a mom in my 50s?’ And she said… back to me, ‘That baby is right on time,'” Kotb shared witn People.
In fact, on her 60th birthday this past Aug. 12, Today unveiled a new mural titled “Right on Time” that features the quote alongside an image of Kotb holding hands with her two daughters.
“If you would have told me when I was in my 40s that this is the life I would have when I’m turning 60, I wouldn’t have believed you,” she added to People. “I felt grateful for what I had, don’t get me wrong, but I sort of felt that that was all there would be; that what I had in life was good enough, and I didn’t deserve anything more. And it wasn’t until my early 50s that I started to change that.”
“We only have one life to live,” Kotb added. ‘We’re only going to be here once. Why should we settle for ‘just enough?’ Do you really want to waste your life not going for what you want?” she continued. “You have to push for it and you have to remember that it’ll come to you… right on time.”
And her words have inspired those around her, too. Andy Cohen, who considers Kotb a friend, has said her mantra helped him feel confident about his decision to have his first child, Ben (now 5), at age 50. In an April Instagram post for his daughter Lucy’s second birthday, Cohen wrote, “Marking time through the filter of my children’s growth is blowing my mind at this later stage of my life. Everything feels on double-time but it’s also, as @hodakotb says, right on time.”
As for her next chapter, Kotb told the Times that she looks forward to spending more time with her daughters: “I have a time pie in front of me, and I think my kids deserve a bigger slice of that pie.”