Hoda Kotb has finally agreed to go on that coffee date.
The former “Today” anchor, 62, made the pledge during a guest-hosting stint on “Today with Jenna & Sheinelle” Monday after her former co-host Jenna Bush Hager pressed her to stop stalling the mystery man she met on a plane last summer.
Kotb admitted she has been dodging multiple invitations from the stranger despite their ongoing text conversations. “He’s asked me to meet him out a couple of times, and I haven’t,” she said on the morning show.
The journalist laid bare her reluctance with unusual candor. “I’ll tell you why I haven’t. One, probably, I’m scared. Two, I think I like a flirt that you don’t know what it is but it might be something,” she confessed. “And sometimes, once you know it isn’t something, then it’s not so fun anymore, so I think I’m just sort of keeping it as a thing.”
Bush Hager was having none of it. She reminded Kotb of her own recent vow to start pursuing what she wants without hesitation.
“Because I’m your friend, and I heard you just say, I’m going to start asking for what I want, I’m not gonna tiptoe around things, and you say you feel like there’s something that could be there, the next time he asks, you gotta go,” Bush Hager urged.
She grew emotional as she pushed harder. “My friend is brave, and does things that scare her, so you gotta go on that coffee date,” she added.
Kotb relented. “OK, I will go on the coffee date,” she finally agreed.
The exchange marked a new level of public openness from Kotb about her romantic prospects since ending her engagement to financier Joel Schiffman, 68, in January 2022. The former couple, who began dating in 2013 and got engaged in November 2019, share two adopted daughters, Haley, 9, and Hope, 7. Kotb explained at the time of their split that they had concluded they were “better as friends and parents” than as a couple.
Despite her hesitation with the mystery man, Kotb insisted she has not abandoned hope for love. “But truly, like, if I were to swallow a truth pill right now, I do believe, I’m 62 years old, I have two young kids, and I believe the love part of my life is a piece that’s coming,” she said. “I don’t go ‘Oh well.’ It’s not like that.”
The roots of this would-be romance stretch back to a chance encounter on a summer flight that Kotb first revealed in August. She recalled sitting beside the man and falling into an extraordinarily intimate conversation. “It was the weirdest connection in the world. We were both crying,” she told Bush Hager and Sheinelle Jones at the time. “It was strange. You know, when you have one of those [conversations where] everything is firing on all cylinders?” According to Kotb, the man kept asking, “Is this a dream? Is this real?” as they bonded midflight. Their connection deepened when they crossed paths again in France, where Kotb had traveled with her wellness company, Joy 101, for the 2026 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. “Our company went to Cannes so we could talk about our company, and he was in the audience, randomly,” she recalled. “Look. There are connections,” she added. “I don’t know what it is.”
Kotb has kept the man’s name private but revealed during a September conversation with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock that he works in artificial intelligence.
The flirtation has unfolded largely through texts since that initial encounter, with Kotb deliberately maintaining the ambiguity that has both thrilled and unnerved her.
Kotb is scheduled to continue promoting Joy 101 with upcoming appearances in New York.