Hoda Kotb Reflects on Her 'Lowest Moments' After Facing Divorce and Cancer Simultaneously

Hoda Kotb

Hoda Kotb got candid about one of the most challenging times of her life, her experience battling breast cancer while simultaneously going through a divorce.

While speaking with her co-host, Jenna Bush Hager, along with special guest and former first lady of California, Maria Shriver, Kotb offered an anecdote related to the show's "Own Your Health" segment.

"I went through a divorce and breast cancer simultaneously, and I remembered in that time barely functioning, and I was thinking to myself like, ‘Is this it? Is this how it goes?" Kotb shared on the Thursday, Oct. 19 episode of Today with Hoda & Jenna.

“I was thinking about some of my lowest moments during that time what was contributing to all of it was I was in horrible health," she explained," and I didn’t care about that piece of it, and you don’t realize how bad it gets and then you’re compounding it, your health gets worse, because you’re not well, and [it] went on and on."

Kotb, now 59, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, during a routine exam. She underwent a double mastectomy that same year and is now cancer-free. A year later, in 2008, the Today show personality divorced her husband of three years and former college tennis coach, Burzis Kanga.

“You realize when you’re on solid ground again, and you look back, and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh I didn’t take an hour for myself,’ there were all the things I never ever did that I am doing today that make such a difference,” she concluded.

One of the things she never did back then was have children. And after treatment for her breast cancer left her unable to conceive, she thought being a mother was never in the cards for her.

“I always thought I've had so many blessings in my life,” Kotb explained back in 2018. “I always assumed that motherhood was just one of those things that I wasn't going to have the privilege of being part of."

But a year prior, Kotb and her then-fiancé Joel Schiffman happily welcomed their first of two kids via adoption: Haley Joy, who joined the family on Valentine's Day 2017, followed by Hope Catherine, in April 2019.

Next: Hoda Kotb Opens Up About Financial Struggles While Being the 'Lowest-Paid Correspondent'