In an emotional interview, Savannah Guthrie announced her official return date to the Today show anchor desk.
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Following Guthrie and Hoda Kotb’s interview on the March 27 morning show, Kotb and the other hosts confirmed Guthrie will return to the Today desk on Monday, April 6.
“She is coming back to this job that she loves here at Today,” Kotb told viewers alongside co-hosts Jenna Bush Hager, Dylan Dryer, Craig Melvin, and Al Roker.
“It’s hard to imagine doing it because it’s such a place of joy and lightness, and I can’t come back and try to be something that I’m not,” Guthrie reasoned about returning to the show, per PEOPLE. “But I can’t not come back because it’s my family. I think it’s part of my purpose right now. I want to smile. And when I do, it will be real. And my joy will be my protest. My joy will be my answer. And being there is joyful. And when it’s not, I’ll say so. I have been so grateful to have this family. I consider this my family, my greater family, and when times are hard, you want to be with your family. And I want to be with my family.”
“I don’t know if I can do it,” a raw Guthrie confessed. “I don’t know if I’ll belong anymore, but I would like to try; I would like to try. I’m not gonna be the same, but maybe it’s like that old poem, more beautiful in the broken places.”
Savannah, 54, has been absent from the Today show since her mother, Nancy, 84, went missing from her Tucson, Arizona, home on January 31. The journalist also pulled out of covering the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan.
During Savannah’s absence, her colleague Hoda Kotb, 61, and fourth-hour co-host Sheinelle Jones stepped in to fill her seat at the anchor desk.
“We always talk about our show as a family. We are a family,” Kotb explained on the Feb. 9 broadcast. “I’m part of the family. I’m happy to be with you because we show up for each other.”
Nancy was last seen entering her garage at 9:50 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 31. Her family reported her missing at 12:03 p.m. on Feb. 1 after she didn’t join friends for a virtual church service.
On Feb. 24, Savannah announced a reward of up to $1 million from the family for information leading to Nancy’s recovery. A separate $100,000 reward from the FBI also remains active. No suspects have been identified.