The former Today host reveals how early she wakes up since retirement, whether more TV is in her future and how she remains so positive.
Hoda Kotb isn’t totally ruling out a return to television.
While attending QVC’s Q50 Age of Possibility summit in Santa Monica on Wednesday, May 14, Kotb told TooFab exclusively how she is spending her days since retiring … and teased her future.
“I get up at 4 instead of 3, sleeping in. I know, I’m so refreshed,” Kotb joked, referring to how early she had to wake up for her previous role as a breakfast television anchor on TODAY. Kotb only recently retired from her post, after 17 years in the position and 25 years with NBC overall.
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“And I do my morning routine that I like to do. I do an exercise routine and meditation and stuff. I get my kids up. I walk them to school. I come home,” she continued. “I do some work. I’m working on a new company. And then after that, I pick them up after school, barbecue some salmon on the grill, night-night at 9:00.”
When TooFab asked whether she would consider being back on TV, perhaps in a late night position, Kotb said it would be past her bed time. “Oh, girl. You know I can’t stay up that late. Like, that’s all. I’m done by nine,” she added.
She did not, however, rule out the idea of daytime television when we brought it up. “Daytime, perhaps,” she replied with a laugh.
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The 60-year-old journalist also opened up about how inspiring it is to be a part of QVC’s celebration of women over 50.
“They always say 50 is the new 30. Fifty is the decade where I think things are limitless. Like to me, my 50s were my favorite decade of all,” she recalled.
“I got my kids in my 50s, my job in my 50s. When we talk about the age of possibility, my blessings came in my 50s. I don’t think I was even born before then,” she continued. “This feels like such a new era for me. So when they called this the Age of Possibility, I was like, ‘Absolutely.’ And I think anyone who thinks, my 40s, I’m not, I haven’t met somebody, I don’t have a family. So what? It’s coming, and it’s coming right on time.”
The journalist shares daughters Haley, 7, and Hope, 5, with ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman.
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She also revealed how she keeps such a positive outlook on life.
“I try to have a mindset that opens me up to good things. In my phone, I have a prompt that says, ‘Good things keep happening to me.’ So on a bad day a couple of weeks ago, my daughter was sick, we missed this, everything was crummy, kids were fighting, blah, blah, blah. I got in the car and I was driving and I said to myself, ‘Good things keep happening to me because … my flight was on time. Good things keep happening to me because … my daughter slept through the night.'”
She added that a simple switch in your brain will help you see “possibilities opening up.”
“If you say everything’s bad, you’re probably right,” she added.
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News that Kotb was leaving Today came as a shock to fans.
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, 60. “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.”
