Hoda Kotb spends Christmas with ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman and children
Hoda Kotbformer fiance Joel Schiffman joined the celebration of Christmas with her family in 2024.
Kotb, 60, shared photos of herself and Schiffman, 66, with their daughters Hailey, 7, and Hope, 5, in matching pajamas on Wednesday, Dec. 25. Earlier, the host of “Today” hinted that she would reunite with Schiffman at the holidays.
“For us, our Christmas is not big because it’s me, my kids, my mom, my sister, Joel,” Kotb shared on the Tuesday, Dec. 24, episode Today with Hodai and Jennawhich was pre-recorded. “We are coming together. That’s the group, and it’s just a cozy Christmas. So tonight we’re going to make Santa and carrot cookies. He always likes cookies better.”
The former quietly met for two years before going public with their romance in 2015. After adopting Haley in 2017, Schiffman popped the question to Kotb in 2019, the same year they adopted Haley. However, Kotb revealed in the January 2022 episode Hoda and Jenna that the couple had decided to end the case after eight years together.
On the eve of her first Christmas in her new home, Hoda Kotb is missing the holidays. “It’s all happening! Good luck everyone!!🥰,” the Today host, 60, wrote via Instagram on Sunday, Dec. 22, alongside a carousel of holiday photos, the first slide of which featured her living room’s holiday decor. Hanging on Kotba (…)
“We decided that we would start this new year and start it on our new journey as loving parents to our adorable, wonderful children and as friends,” she explained on air at the time. “And not that something happened. They say that sometimes relationships are there for a reason, for a season or a lifetime. And I feel like ours should have been there for the season.”
Shiffman’s inclusion in this year’s holiday festivities is special because it’s the first Christmas Kotb and her girls will spend in their new suburban home. (In March, Kotb announced that she and her children were moving outside of New York.)
“I’m really excited that the stockings will be hanging in a place that you know will be a place where they’ll be hanging for years – we’ve just decided for the first time where the tree will go and we know from this day on, that’s where it’s going to go – all that cool stuff,” she told her co-host, Jenna Bush Hager. “We decorated our house with such beautiful things.”
Kotb went on to say that her new home felt like home after her spent her first Thanksgiving in space last month. “The fact that we were all sitting at the table together, and I imagine that at Christmas, too,” she noted. (Shiffman did not appear Pictures on Instagram Kotb shared her Thanksgiving celebration.)
Walking with the family.
Courtesy of Hoda Kotb/InstagramKotb teased Schiffman’s involvement in her Christmas plans over the weekend. Exchange Pictures on Instagram among the holiday decorations in her home, a stocking with the name “Dad” on it was displayed among the rest of the family stockings hanging over the fireplace in Kotb’s living room.
“It’s all happening! Good luck everyone!!🥰,” Kotb captioned the photos, which included a selfie of herself getting hit in the face with a snowball as she played outside with Haley, Hope and her mom, Together.
Bush Hager, 43, shared her vacation plans on Tuesday’s episode Hoda and Jennastating that it is her family’s “tradition” to go to her home state of Texas for Christmas. (She shared by children Milo, 11, Poppy, 9, and Hal, 5, with husband, Henry Hager.)
“We are outside. Especially when we lived here in the city, it was so good for my kids because they didn’t know—I remember when Mila was 2, she was like, “There’s no God! There is no god!’ because she had never seen a bug before,” she joked. “And my dad (former president George Bush) was like, “Oh, Jenna. You will have to take her outside.’ So, we go to nature, we go hiking, we play. It’s just fun. And then the carolers from the local church come and sing, for example, “Oh Happy Day,” which is my father’s favorite. He wants it at his funeral.’
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