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TODAY family members honor 'role model' Hoda Kotb with moving speeches at Matrix Awards

The TODAY co-anchor’s friends and colleagues celebrated her as she became a Matrix Award winner.
/ Source: TODAY

Congratulations to TODAY co-anchor Hoda Kotb!

On Monday night, the beloved member of the TODAY family was honored at the annual Matrix Awards, an event that celebrates outstanding women in communications.

And it also proved to be an event that allowed many people who know and love Hoda to share why she’s an ideal recipient of the award.

“Hoda’s story is so inspirational, because she just was up against all odds to even get her first job in television,” said her former fourth hour co-host, Kathie Lee Gifford.

But her perseverance paid off, and when Hoda finally got her big break, she ran with it and began to hone the skills that have carried her so far.

“She has worked so hard to get where she is,” her TODAY with Hoda & Jenna co-host, Jenna Bush Hager, shared.

And, as Al Roker noted, “Hoda does serious news interviews along with the best of them.”

Past Matrix Award winner and TODAY co-anchor Savannah Guthrie agreed, adding, “She also has an amazing way of connecting with people.”

And that’s something former TODAY co-anchor Meredith Vieira called Hoda’s “gift,” saying, “That's what great communicators in this business have — being able to draw other people out. And she has that in spades.”

Of course, the 57-year-old is so much more than just an interviewer or television personality. She’s an author, podcaster and a beacon of positivity who’s just as inspirational when it comes to her personal life as she is in her professional life.

“She had been through breast cancer,” Savannah recalled. “She had gone through a divorce. And I think she thought to herself, motherhood is not something that's going to happen for me. And at some point she just woke up, and she said, Well, why not me? ... She's somebody who's ever-evolving and never satisfied to stop learning. And to me, that is a role model for all women in communications.”

Maria Shriver summed it up during the virtual ceremony, saying that Hoda “brings hope, she brings light, she brings love.”

And she brought a bit of all of that to her acceptance speech Monday night.

“All of my professional dreams came true,” Hoda explained. “I had a lifetime at ‘Dateline,’ I had a lifetime with Kathie Lee and now Jenna, and now I have a new lifetime with Savannah on the early hours. Every professional dream came true for me.”

And then, she shared a life lesson that led to her personal dreams coming true.

“If you want something bad enough, say it out loud,” Hoda insisted. “A friend once said, ‘Even if you whisper it in the bathroom mirror to yourself.’”

That friend, she revealed on TODAY Tuesday, was Savannah, and those words helped put Hoda on the path to motherhood.

“One thing I always wanted was kids, and I was afraid to speak it,” she said during her Matrix Award speech. “And one day I just looked at (my fiancé) Joel (Schiffman), the guy I had been dating for a year, and blurted something out that I thought I wasn’t going to be able to say.”

She asked him to take a week and really consider the possibility of adopting a child with her.

“He paused for a nanosecond and said, ‘I don’t need a week. I don’t need a minute. The answer is yes,’” she shared. And now she and Joel are the proud parents of daughters Haley and Hope.

“So say your dreams out loud, if you speak them, sometimes they do come true,” she said.