Hoda Kotb says the death of her beloved father left an indelible scar on her heart.
"My dad passed when I was in college," the TODAY co-host told Laura Jarrett, the Saturday TODAY co-anchor who filled in for Jenna Bush Hager on Jan. 10. "But there is kind of this father-sized hole that just lives in girls, women like us."
She added, "There's something about having that gap, and how do you fill it and where do you find that kind of fatherly energy or love?"
Laura lost her father as a young child.
“Family was everything to us,” Laura told Hoda. “My mom raised me ... my grandparents lived five minutes away. My grandfather took me to school every day of my life ... even after I could drive. Even after I got my license.”
Hoda is mother to daughters Haley, 6, and Hope, 4, whom she shares with her former partner Joel Schiffman. She was a university student at Virginia Tech when her brother Abel gave her crushing news at a sorority formal.
"And my brother runs in, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, my brother always said he was gonna crash Tri Delt formals, like he and his buddy did it," Hoda recalled in 2021. "And he said, ‘Come outside.’ And I said, ‘What?’ He goes, ‘Come outside, I need to talk to you, and I go, ‘No.’ I said, ‘You need to tell me,’ and he said, ‘Dad had a heart attack, and he died.'"
“It was like you couldn’t even compute what was going on," she added.
Laura is the mother of son James, 4, and daughter June, 1, with attorney Tony Balkissoon. Laura's mom is Valerie Jarrett, the former senior advisor to President Barack Obama.
Laura reflected on her morning ritual with her grandfather, aka "Papa."
"We had the best deal where every day, one of us would choose the radio stations — I would choose the hip-hop and he got to know '90s hip-hop ... he would make me listen to NPR on his days and classical music," she said. "That was our little thing. We would talk about our days, we would talk about frustrations at school ... that was our special time together."
Being raised by a single mom helped Laura see her potential, she said.
"It's funny because now, I think about it like a mom, and so all the guilt I have about missing bedtime or missing the soccer practice," said Laura. "I never picked up on that; even if she was rushing around to make things, I didn't know it. She wasn't showing that. And so, sometimes I think back on how hard that must have been for her, trying to keep that stiff upper lip. And trying to make sure that she was everywhere and in 1,000 places at once."
Hoda agreed, saying, "My mom was a working mom too — they didn't make excuses like, 'Mommy has to go to work.' They're like, "Mommy is going to work.' And that was it."
According to Laura, Valerie wanted to "demystify" the working world for her daughter.
"On the weekends, she would take me down to City Hall and I would play, 'Chamber of Commerce,'" she said. "And we would hang out. I didn't know that she was actually having to do work but I was having fun playing office. But she wanted me to see all those sides of her. But when we were together, she was 100% all in, all present."