Born in Norman, Oklahoma in 1964, the well-known Hoda Kotb is an American broadcast journalist, television personality, and author. She is a main co-anchor of the NBC News morning show Today and co-host of its entertainment-focused fourth hour. Kotb formerly served as a correspondent for the television news magazine program Dateline NBC.

Kotb grew up in Morgantown, West Virginia and Alexandria, Virginia, to parents that immigrated to the United States from Egypt. Kotb and her family lived in Egypt for a year, and has discussed the origin of her name, “So my name Hoda is so weird here, but in Egypt it’s like Jane. I’ve walked down the streets in Cairo and someone yelled out “Hoda!” and like 10 girls turned around. I’m literally the Jane Smith of the Nile..” and further discussing her connection to her Egyptian heritage, “My parents raised us red, white and blue…My parents felt that they picked this country, and we were going to be like the people in this country. I don’t think we lost our uniqueness though. We still have different stuff that Egyptian people eat or drink or do, and we celebrate those things.”

In addition to many career achievements, in 2019, Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford were awarded a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informative Talk Show Host during their time as co-hosts on NBC, and most recently in 2021, she was awarded the Matrix Award, by the Association for Women in Communications.

Photo: “Hoda Kotb” by Susan G. Komen® is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0