Hoda Kotb will soon be heading to Paris for the 2024 Olympics, but her young daughters won’t be joining her for the global sporting event.
To stay connected to her daughters while she’s away, Kotb, 59, said she will be making a “Love You Loops” paper chain for her kids Haley, 7, and Hope. “I do a loop a day where we hide a little something like stickers or hair ties, and then they know how many days are left,” she explained on the Monday, July 22, episode of Today With Hoda & Jenna.
Her cohost, Jenna Bush Hager, quipped that her paper chain is “gonna be some long loops” as Kotb and Today anchors Savannah Guthrie, Al Roker and Craig Melvin will be leaving their NYC base and traveling to Paris later this week to cover the Olympics, which will take place from Friday, July 26, through Sunday, August 11.
Kotb shares her daughters with her ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman. The pair adopted Haley and Hope in 2017 and 2019, respectively, before ending their eight-year relationship in 2022.
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With the opening ceremony just days away, Kotb revealed that she still has “everything” to do to get ready for her trip abroad. “I have to do all the things you have to do before you get on a plane, but I’m excited,” she stated, noting that her to-do list includes getting her nails done and buying an outlet converter.
Luckily, Kotb received some packing help from Bush Hager, 42. “I said to Jenna, ‘I don’t know if I have the clothes,’” she shared. “You go, ‘I’m getting it. I’m done,’ literally, on her phone. 15 minutes later, I go upstairs and what’s there? All Americana, cool, fun stuff. I’m packing it up.”
Last month, Kotb traveled to Minneapolis to cheer on the athletes competing at the gymnastics Olympic trials. Comprising this year’s U.S. women’s gymnastics team are veterans Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles, Suni Lee and Jade Carey, as well as newcomer Hezly Rivera. Fellow gymnasts Joscelyn Roberson and Leanne Wong will serve as alternates.
Kotb chatted with the team following the competition, during which Biles, 27, said the 2024 Olympics will be a “redemption tour” after the team earned silver in the 2020 gymnastic team competition in Tokyo. “In Tokyo, we all didn’t have our best performances, so we’re excited to to out there and kill it,” she said in the interview, which aired on the July 1 episode of Today.
Biles notably pulled out of several of her events in Tokyo after experiencing the “twisties,” a term used to describe a gymnast’s loss of control while performing. Lee, 21, stepped in for Biles and ultimately earned a gold medal in the women’s all-around competition. Just as Biles worked to overcome mental health issues, Lee also battles two kinds of kidney disease leading up to the Paris games.
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“It feels absolutely insane. It was just such a hard, incredible journey,” she told Kotb of her health journey. “There were so many times where I thought about quitting and just giving up because I was so sick, and it was just so hard to stay motivated, watching everybody get better and I can’t even get back into the gym, and constantly self-doubting myself. But once I had those people around me who lifted me up and supported me, I knew that this is something that I wanted.”
Kotb went on to suggest potential nicknames for the team, including the “Fantastic Five,” the “Phenomenal Five” and the “Fearless Five.” Biles joked that the nickname should be left up to the “TikTokers” to decide, quipping, “They’ll think of something.”
