Hoda Kotb Details Decision to Leave Today Show

While appearing on Monday’s episode of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, the longtime morning show anchor recalled the moment she realized it was time to close this chapter of her career.

“I think I’m doing this, like, repotting thing,” said Kotb, 66. “You know when you pull yourself up by the roots, and you’re kind of dangling, and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, what am I doing? What’s happening?’ But you know you’re going to land in fertile ground.”

“When I turned 60, something weird happened, man,” she added. “I turned 60, and we had this beautiful party at the Today show, and I looked out at the sea of all the people who came, and beautiful signs and so many well wishes and I knew in my heart like, ‘This is it, man. This is what the mountaintop must feel like.’ Like I’d never had that feeling before.”

Fallon then jokingly asked what time Kotb gets up for work every morning, to which she revealed that she wakes up at 3:15 a.m, before she then does the show from 7:00 a.m. until 11:00 a.m.

“That’s all of your time! Your life is going to completely change. This is fantastic!” Fallon told Kotb, who replied, “What am I gonna do at night?”

“You’re going to go to concerts! You’re going to go out on dates!” Fallon said enthusiastically. “You’re going to go to restaurants! You’re going to watch bad TV. You’re gonna do whatever the heck you want because you don’t have to wake up at three in the morning.”

Kotb admitted that it’s “going to be totally weird” for her not to have to wake up so early. “I’ve woken up at this time for like 17 years,” she said. “This is the first time, no alarm, click it off.”

The journalist — who shares daughters Haley, 7, and Hope, 5, with ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman — went on to reveal how her kids reacted to the news.

“I was telling them, ‘Mommy is going to be able to take you to school,’ and they go, ‘[Gasp] Wednesday?’ ‘No honey, not Wednesday.’ ‘Next week?’ I go, ‘No honey, not next week. Probably somewhere January, February,'” Kotb recalled. “They said, ‘January, February?’ I might as well continue working forever. For them, it’s like till the end.”

Kotb continued by reiterating how her daughters were a major factor in her decision to leave Today.

“You know what, you just have a feeling when you watch them grow,” she told Fallon. “I was like, they need a little more of me, and I need more of them, so I think it’s all gonna work out beautifully.”

“But I’m going to be doing stuff here at NBC, I’m going to stay in the family,” added Kotb, who has been with the network for over 25 years, calling it the “longest love affair of my life.”

The television personality announced her departure on September 26, sharing the news on the morning Today broadcast, while also penning a letter to staff and crew at the show.

“As I write this, my heart is all over the map. I know I’m making the right decision, but it’s a painful one. And you all are the reason why. They say two things can be right at the same time, and I’m feeling that so deeply right now. I love you and it’s time for me to leave the show,” Kotb wrote in the letter in part. “My time at NBC has been the longest professional love affair of my life. But only because you’ve been beside me on this twenty-six-year adventure. Looking back, the math is nuts. 26 years at NBC News – Ten years at Dateline, seven on the seven o’clock hour, sixteen on the ten o’clock hour. I’m picturing your faces and your families and all the ways you’ve lifted me up and inspired me.”

Kotb has been part of NBC News for nearly three decades, previously working on Dateline and as the co-host of the fourth hour of Today with Kathie Lee Gifford and then Jenna Bush Hager. She and Guthrie have co-anchored Today for more than five years.