Faith and family are two topics that light up Kathie Lee Gifford.
“Five grandchildren in three years,” the four-time Emmy-winning TV host tells Yahoo. “It’s like precious pandemonium.”
Her daughter, Cassidy, lives in the Nashville area and has two children. Son Cody lives in Connecticut and has three. Luckily, Gifford has homes near both, so she can log a lot of “Bubbe” time. Gifford goes by the Yiddish word for grandmother — though one granddaughter has shortened it to simply “Bob,” which makes her laugh.
“Anytime a child is born is an amazing blessing. I just rejoice,” says the former host of Today With Kathie Lee and Hoda and Live With Regis and Kathie Lee. “It’s like one of the final miracles left in this world, because it’s such a dark place too often.”
The same sense of awe carries into her latest creative work: the historical thriller Nero & Paul, How the Gospel of Grace Defeated the Ruler of Rome, out now. The book is the second in the Ancient Evil, Living Hope trilogy she’s writing with coauthor Bryan M. Litfin.
The book juxtaposes the contrasting figures of Nero, the Roman emperor who spent his life clawing for power and clinging to it, and Paul, who changed his path, surrendering to faith and purpose as an apostle.
Gifford, who’s also producing a movie about Paul with her son, studies rabbinically and says she has built a relationship with God that has nothing to do with “religion.”
“I’m the least religious person you’ve talked to,” she says. “I don’t like religion. It puts us in chains. Relationship with the living God releases the chains to be who we truly, authentically are in him.”
That conviction is what she’s leaned on in her toughest moments, including the death of her husband, NFL legend Frank Gifford, in 2015.
“When I found my husband dead on the floor, I could cry tears of absolute joy because I knew where he went and who he was with,” she says. “[I] don’t fear death. The greatest day in my life will be the day that I go home to Jesus. The best day — and I’ve had some great ones.”
Prayer is a connector she’s used with her friend and former Today colleague Savannah Guthrie, whose mother, Nancy, was abducted on Feb. 1.
“I probably heard the news a lot sooner than most people, and I immediately started praying for Savannah,” she says. “[Later], I just started texting her: ‘Love you. Praying for you,’” she says. “Just that message over and over again.”
It was about a month before she got a reply.
“She said, ‘Love you, friend,’” Gifford says. “I was just happy to hear her respond. I didn’t need it, but it said something to me about how she is, maybe, in her healing.”
The last time I spoke with Gifford, she had just had hip replacement surgery, in 2024, which was a challenge. Now 72, she updates that she’s had four operations in the last year alone.
“It just gets harder. Everything gets harder,” she says of aging. “The golden years? It’s a lie.”
One surgery came after Gifford fell on an uneven sidewalk following a morning exercise class. She shrugged it off — “My lip cracked. I didn’t break a tooth. I’m good” — until an X‑ray revealed two broken bones.
“You can do all kinds of stuff to your body, but it knows how old you are and where you’ve been and what you did when you went there,” she says. “No keeping secrets from it.”
But her mind is sharp, whether she’s going deep on biblical topics or recounting the origin story of how wine started flowing on Today’s fourth hour.
She says she’s determined to keep it that way. Instead of asking Siri or Google to look up a fact, she runs through the alphabet until the answer comes. She also credits memorization for boosting her brain.
“It makes my mind work,” she says. “It keeps it sharp.”
Her late husband was posthumously diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and her father had Lewy body dementia, so she’s mindful of hurdles others face.
Gifford herself is unstoppable. She’s working on her next book and looking ahead to an upcoming documentary about her life.
If age has gifted her anything, Gifford says it’s clarity about what matters. She’s been letting go of possessions and investing in things she believes in.
“I’ve made tons of money in my career, which I never dreamed I’d be able to have,” she says. “I’ve given away, I would say, more than half of it, and been grateful to do it.”
Profits from her faith‑based projects, like Nero & Paul, go to the Rock, the Road & the Rabbi Foundation.
She laughs that Frank used to get mad at how much she gave. “He stopped doing that when he realized that once I gave something, I got it back a hundredfold,” she says. “I said, ‘God loves a generous soul.’ … You can never out‑give God. I’d rather die giving something away than holding it unto myself and not being able to take it with me anyway.”
Today, Cody helps run the businesses while Gifford focuses on the work she feels called to do.
“Some people love their misery,” she says. “I’m not one of them. I want the joy. I want the zoe.”
