Hoda Kotb got candid about her marriage to Burzis Kanga and why she would do things differently if given the chance.
“We let the idea that we should be married by now influence us,” Kotb, 61, wrote in her Jump and Find Joy: Embracing Change in Every Season of Life memoir, which is out now. “So, instead of us taking the opportunity to part ways and stay solo, he came out to visit and proposed during a Central Park horse ride … and I said yes.”
Kotb recalled thinking that she “might as well” before accepting Kanga’s proposal.
“I didn’t jump into marriage as much as I slipped into it. We are comfortable together, it was time, and it seemed like the logical step,” she detailed about how the then-couple thought it “would be fine” for them. “And for a while it was.”
While Kotb and Kanga, 66, didn’t have any major issues, they “both knew” their marriage “wasn’t really right for either” of them.
“It wasn’t going to go the distance. I don’t regret that time in my life because every experience gets you a little bit closer to where you are today — where you were meant to be,” Kotb continued. “But I bet if you could have paused us midair, as we were slipping into marriage, to ask, ‘Hey, is this what you really want?’ We would have looked at each other and said. ‘Naaah.'”
Kotb was married to Kanga from 2005 to 2008. She later found love with Joel Schiffman, with whom she shares daughters Haley, 8, and Hope, 6. They quietly dated for two years before making their romance public in 2015.
After adopting Haley in 2017, Schiffman, 67, popped the question to Kotb in 2019, the same year they adopted Hope. Kotb ultimately revealed on a January 2022 episode of Hoda & Jenna that the pair had decided to call it quits after eight years together.
“We decided that we are gonna start this new year and begin it on our new path as loving parents to our adorable, delightful children and as friends,” she explained at the time. “And it’s not like something happened. They say sometimes relationships are meant to be there for a reason, for a season or for a lifetime. And I feel like ours was meant to be there for a season.”
Despite their split, the pair have maintained a healthy coparenting relationship.
“The ultimate goal is when your girls are happy. That’s what we both say, ‘Happy girls, that’s all we want.’ And that’s what we have,” Kotb exclusively told Luxury Handbag Shopping in November 2022. “So, they enjoy spending time with their dad and they enjoy spending time with me and everybody on my side. So it’s been really good [and] we have a nice mix.”
Kotb called Schiffman “one of the best people I know” while opening up about their split on “The Jamie Kern Lima Show” podcast in 2024. “And I feel like I’m a pretty great human being, but sometimes two great human beings together isn’t quite enough to make it work,” she added.
Jump and Find Joy is out now.
