Hoda Kotb leaving 'Today' next year

Surrounded on a couch by her colleagues live on air Thursday, “Today” co-anchor Hoda Kotb announced that after 17 years on the NBC morning show she will be leaving it early next year.

“I have some news,” said Kotb, 60, who has a home on Point Lookout in addition to a recently purchased one in Bronxville, just north of New York City. Flanked by fellow anchors Al Roker, Craig Melvin, Savannah Guthrie, Jenna Bush Hager and Sheinelle Jones, she said, “I was doing the math, and I realized that I have spent 26 years at NBC.” Through tears, she added, “And I just turned 60 and it was such a monumental moment for me. … I realized that it was time for me to turn the page at 60, and to try something new.”

The epiphany came, she said, during a 60th-birthday celebration on the plaza outside the show’s Rockefeller Center studio last month, and seeing “this beautiful bunch of people with all these gorgeous signs. And I thought, ‘This is what the top of the wave feels like for me.’ ” Again breaking down, she went on: “And I thought it can't get better, and I decided that this is the right time for me to kind of move on,” while remaining with NBC News in an unspecified capacity.

Noting she had become a mother late in life, Kotb said her adopted daughters, 7-year-old Haley and 5-year-old Hope, “deserve a bigger piece of my time pie that I have. I feel like we only have a finite amount of time.”

In a nearly 400-word memo from Kotb to her “Today” colleagues, posted on the show’s website, she additionally mentioned her mother, retired Library of Congress staffer Sameha Kotb. Saying that while “my broadcast career has been beyond meaningful, a new decade of my life lies ahead, and now my daughters and my mom need and deserve” more of her time.

“[M]y heart is all over the map,” Hoda Kotb wrote. “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.”

On air, each of her colleagues spoke emotionally of their personal and professional connection to Kotb. “You have guts,” Guthrie told her. “For someone to leave at the top of their game, to leave something that’s wonderful, that you love, where it’s easy and comfortable and beautiful and fun … . You inspire me. I love you.”

“You’ve been the heart of this show for a long time,” said Melvin, “and there’s no replacing that.”