Savannah Guthrie and husband Michael Feldman have been sharing information about Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance with their two kids.
“It’s so hard with kids,” Savannah, 54, said during the second part of her Today show interview, which aired on Thursday, March 26. “You want to protect them.”
Savannah and Feldman, who wed in 2014, share 11-year-old daughter Vale and 9-year-old son Charley.
“They’ll write me all the time, ‘Mama, any leads? You hear anything? Any hope?’” she told former colleague Hoda Kotb on Thursday. “I think that we try to talk to them and try to get them a little more certainty than we have, to let them grieve.”
Savannah said the same goes for her “little nephew,” referring to sister Annie Guthrie’s son with husband Tommaso Cioni.
Savannah’s mom, Nancy, has been missing since February 1 after she was taken from her Arizona home. Authorities have yet to name a suspect in her disappearance, but the FBI has released footage of a masked assailant outside Nancy’s house on the night she disappeared.
Savannah said on Thursday that it was “absolutely terrifying” seeing the person who may have taken her mother, but she hopes the video will allow for the investigation to continue.
“I’m glad and grateful to the investigators and the technology companies that were able to find that video,” she added. “So, I hope at least with people of good heart and compassion stop the irresponsible and cruel speculation that had started to swirl. I’m glad that people saw what came to our door.”
Savannah also told Kotb on Thursday that her sister, Annie, was the one who told her that Nancy had gone missing.
“She was in a panic, I was in a panic,” she recalled. “We thought that she must have had some kind of medical episode in the night and somehow the paramedics had come, because the back doors were propped open and that didn’t make any sense.”
However, it didn’t take long for them to realize that something was wrong, explaining that Nancy “can’t wander off” because of her health.
“My mom, she was in tremendous pain, her back was very bad. On a good day, she could walk down to the mailbox and get the mail, but most days not,” Savannah explained. “There was no ‘wander off.’ The doors were propped open, and there was blood on the front doorstep. The Ring camera had been yanked off. And so we were saying, ‘This is not OK.’”
As the search continues, Savannah remains hopeful, telling Kotb that she still thinks of Nancy in “present tense.”
