Hoda Kotb and Joel Schiffman Are Engaged! All About His Beach Proposal
Congratulations are in order for Hoda Kotb — the Today show co-host is engaged!
Kotb, 55, and her longtime financier beau Joel Schiffman, 61, will walk down the aisle, she confirmed on the morning show, Monday.
The mom of two said that Schiffman proposed while they were having “a little dinner on the beach,” telling her, “Be my wife.”
She added, “He said some beautiful things.”
“My heart has literally been pounding,” she told her excited co-hosts, adding, “I was totally shocked. He had a good poker face.”
Kotb noted the pair — who have been together for six years — hadn’t told her daughters, Haley Joy, 2, and Hope Catherine, who she adopted in April. “We’re still trying to figure out that part,” she admitted.
That bling 💍 looks great on @hodakotb. Congrats to Hoda and Joel on their engagement! pic.twitter.com/QOU6BnzlOU
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 25, 2019
Back in 2016, Kotb announced on Sirius XM‘s “The Hoda Show” that she would moving in with her boyfriend of then three years, Schiffman. “It’s a little weird to be in your 50s and we’re like ‘Hey, we’re moving in!’ ” Kotb said. “It’s like we’re kids. It’s so weird.”
The NBC co-host, who was previously married to Burzis Kanga for two years from 2005 to 2007, gushed about her relationship with Schiffman in 2015. “He’s the guy that gives me butterflies at 50 years old,” she said.
“It’s one of the most natural relationships I’ve ever been in,” she previously told PEOPLE of her romance, and added, “I’m so happy, I really am. But you know sometimes you hate to jinx something. I’m like, ‘don’t jinx it!’ ”
Although Schiffman was left off of the domestic adoption application documents to simplify the entire process when she adopted Haley in 2017, Kotb told PEOPLE that “Haley will call him Dad.”
“I was afraid to even say it out loud, because then it felt so real,” she told PEOPLE. “I said, ‘Think about it for a day or a week or whatever.’ And he said, ‘I don’t need a day. Let’s get this journey going.’ At that point I blubbered like a baby. It was like the dam burst.”
“[He] has been so great,” Kotb gushed about Schiffman, who has an adult daughter, Kyle, from his previous marriage. “He’s such a great dad and a great influence.”
