When Kelly Clarkson found out that Hoda Kotb got engaged last fall, she greeted the happy news with congratulations — and complete confusion.
It’s not that there was anything surprising about the fact that the TODAY anchor would wed Joel Schiffman, her partner of the past six years. It’s just that Clarkson thought it had already happened.
Hoda opened up about her engagement on Thursday’s episode of “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” and that’s when the singer-turned-talk show host made her embarrassing confession.
“I have thought you were married this whole time!” she said with a laugh. “Like, you’re newly engaged, and I’m like, ‘Congratulations!’ (But) my mind was like, ‘What?!’”
As it turns out, Clarkson was just so accustomed to seeing Hoda and Joel by each other’s side, enjoying life and co-parenting together, that she simply assumed the nuptials were a given.
“Any time you send me videos of drinking with your man or you’re on vacation — first of all, I’m like, ‘I want your life’ — and I thought you were married this whole time.”
So when the “Love So Soft” singer heard about an upcoming wedding, she briefly believed Hoda had moved on to another man altogether.
“They were like, ‘Oh, she got engaged,’” Clarkson recalled. “I was like, ‘To another person?’ Like, ‘Did she divorce?!’”
Of course, now she knows better.
Hoda and Joel couldn’t be closer — and their wedding date is pretty close, too.
While the couple haven’t shared the exact day they plan to say their “I dos,” during a recent visit to “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” Hoda revealed it’ll happen this fall. And, as she told E! News, their daughters, soon-to-be 3-year-old Haley Joy and soon-to-be 1-year-old Hope Catherine, will be right by their sides on the big day.