“By the way, Kat’s living her best life, she’s in Nashville, she’s writing music, she is living her best life,” Kotb said. “She’s playing with the cutest grandkids, putting out good music, so Kat, love you.”
Gifford and Kotb began hosting the fourth hour of Today in 2008. Gifford stayed on until April 2019 at which point Jenna Bush Hager, who often filled in, replaced her.
She explained her husband’s death in 2015 pushed her to leave the Today show.
“After my husband passed, you really realize that you’re gonna run out of time. He didn’t know that morning he was running out of time,” Gifford told Jimmy Fallon during an appearance on The Tonight Show at the time. “And then my mom passed, as well.”
“I realized just recently that I’m in a state where I never dreamed I’d be. I’m a widow, I’m an orphan and I’m an empty nester and that just hit me like a ton of bricks. For the first time in my life, I have the time and the means to go and do anything I want to do.”
Since leaving the NBC morning show, Gifford has moved to Nashville where she’s been able to work on several projects including a book, a “dream project“, and of course watching her three grandchildren grow up.
