Hoda Kotb says Savannah Guthrie is still raising her kids and refusing to rest while her mother Nancy stays missing, calling her friend’s strength “immeasurable” amid a grueling ordeal.
Speaking Sunday, Sept. 27, at Joy 101’s Fall Retreat on Amelia Island, Florida, the former “Today” co-anchor told USA TODAY that Guthrie has not slowed down even as the search for her mother stretches on.
Nancy Guthrie, 84, was reported missing from her home near Tucson, Arizona, on Feb. 1. The investigation remains active. On Monday, Sept. 28, officials said they were looking into a new alleged ransom note.
Kotb, 62, framed her colleague’s response in plain terms: Guthrie is still a mom, still a wife, still a sister, and still a daughter, and she is not giving the people who took her mother the rest of her life.
Kotb pointed first to Guthrie’s own words.
She told the paper:
"When I think about Savannah, I think about her words, which are, ‘We won't rest until we have answers,'"
Then she added her own assessment of how that vow looks day to day.
Kotb said:
"She's not resting. She is incredible. She is spiritual. She is an awesome mom, an awesome wife, an incredible sister [to siblings Camron and Annie Guthrie], and an awesome daughter. So I think for her to be in this loop has to be grueling."
Guthrie has two children at home, Vale, 12, and Charles, 9. Kotb said her friend is still raising them and still doing the ordinary work of family life while the case remains unsolved, a posture that tracks with earlier family calls for answers in the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping saga.
In a March interview after she stepped away from the morning desk, Guthrie spoke through tears about the family’s nightmare and agony. She also made a hard promise: she would “not fall apart,” would not let whoever did this take her children’s mother from them, and would not let them take her joy.
Kotb said that stance has held.
She put it this way:
"She's not allowing them to take what she has in her. She's raising her kids [Vale, 12, and Charles, 9]. She's doing all of the things that she does, and she's not allowing it. And she's not resting. Both things are actually true."
Kotb did not pretend there is an easy comfort for a daughter in that spot. She said she loves Guthrie and wants to soothe her the way other friends do. She also said they cannot.
Her counsel was simpler:
"I love her dearly. I want to soothe her and help her, like her other friends do. And we can't. But the only thing, I think, as friends and anyone who's going through anything is just to be present and be around when they need you."
That instinct showed up days later. On Tuesday, Sept. 29, Kotb surprised Guthrie with a visit to NBC’s studios at Rockefeller Center in New York, a quiet, practical form of the presence she described.
Women at an earlier Joy 101 retreat in Scottsdale in March pressed the same message on Kotb. She recalled them saying they wanted Savannah to know they were praying for her.
Kotb told USA TODAY:
"They were just like, ‘Listen to me. You tell Savannah that we're praying for her. You tell her,'"
She called the example Guthrie is setting hard to measure, even while the underlying facts stay brutal.
Kotb said:
"So the inspiration that she's giving, through all of it, to me, is immeasurable, and it seems so unusual to say that in the midst of this horrible thing."
Kotb and Guthrie became the show’s first female leading duo since its 1952 debut when Kotb joined as co-anchor in 2018 after Matt Lauer’s ouster. Kotb left the chair in 2025 to build Joy 101, her wellness company, which runs an app and live events on wellbeing.
When Guthrie took leave after her mother’s disappearance, Kotb returned to the anchor desk in February. The next month she led the tearful interview in which Guthrie described the family’s ordeal on air. Periods when Guthrie has been away from the morning program have tracked the unresolved case.
The bond between the two anchors was already public before the crisis. When Kotb announced her exit, the New York Post reported that no one on the team took the news harder than Guthrie, who teared up on air, kept a bottle of Whispering Angel rosé close, and said she loved Kotb and told her own kids not to be sorry it was over but glad it happened.
Kotb is still in the mix at NBC as a contributor. She has recently interviewed Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman for “Today,” has an upcoming sit-down with retired Saints quarterback Drew Brees, and is set to join Guthrie for NBC’s coverage of Macy’s 100th Thanksgiving Day Parade on Nov. 26.
Of her current role she said simply, "I'm in the mix. So I'm excited about it."
Kotb spent the weekend of the Amelia Island retreat with the company she left the daily desk to build. She described the work as clearer now than it once was, a chance to bring people together after years of soaking up lessons from the people she interviewed.
She told the paper she got to “sit at the feet of all of the greats,” and that the old skills of listening now feel natural in this new setting. An earlier line she has lived by still fits: when you get a chance to live your dream, you have to take it.
None of that changes the open file in Arizona. Officials have not closed the case. They are examining a new alleged ransom note months after Nancy Guthrie vanished, and earlier turns in the probe, including confusion around notes and other desert finds near Tucson, have left the family and public waiting, as when the Pima County sheriff’s note statements shifted in public view.
Human remains recovered in the Tucson desert were separately ruled out as a link to the case, another dead end in a search that has produced more questions than arrests. Readers following those updates know how often hope has been raised and then pulled back.
What Kotb offered was not a status report from investigators. It was a close friend’s account of a daughter who is still showing up for her children, her siblings, and her work while she waits for answers she has already said she will not stop seeking. The Guthrie family’s renewed pleas have kept that demand in public view even as months pass without a resolution.
Strength under pressure is not a press release. It is a mother of two who will not hand her joy to the people who took her own mother, and friends who keep showing up when they cannot fix a thing.