Hoda Kotb Shares Update on 5-Year-Old Daughter Hope One Year After Health Scare

And it was that experience, that helped influence her decision to retire from her full-time position at NBC’s Today at the top of next year, which she announced last month. 

“I've had yearnings, and you know when something's pulling you?” Hoda told People. “It's like you either go toward it or you shove it down and say, ‘Nope, this is the way. I'm going to stay here because it's safe.’” 

“It does make more sense to stay at NBC,” she continued. “I'm financially secure and I would have job security. I mean, why would you ever not do that? But I've been watching my kids and I was thinking to myself, I wonder what I'm missing?”

But it came down to wanting to make a change for her daughters.

“I knew that I wanted this decade to be different,” Hoda explained. “I looked at my time like a pie. I was like, this is how much time I get, and now what am I going to do with it and how am I going to carve it up? And I wanted it to be filled with more of them.”

And the journalist wanted to find a balance that she couldn’t have as a full-time working mom.

“There’s the guilt you carry because you can't be 100 percent at work and 100 percent at home,” she noted. “Something has to give if you want excellence. If you're going to be excellent at work, something has to give at home. And if you want to be excellent at home, I mean excellent, and do all the things, something has to give at work. It can't be equal.”

Keep reading for more of the Today anchor’s family moments…

(E! and Today are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)