Hoda Kotb has opened up about the “hot” way she met her police officer ex-boyfriend while nursing a broken heart.
The Today host reminisced about her former “knight in shining armor” during Thursday’s show while chatting with Jenna Bush Hager about recovery from a breakup.
Kotb, 59, noted that “it seems like Joe Manganiello has already moved on” following his split from Sofía Vergara after he was spotted with actress Caitlin O’Connor.
“Sometimes when you’re weak, in a kind of rundown state after a breakup, you’re vulnerable, and then you meet someone. So that person is the knight in shining armor,” she said.
Hoda Kotb, 59, told how she met her ex-cop boyfriend at a laundromat on the Today show on Thursday
The host explained to Jenna Bush Hager that she was upset after the “terrible breakup” and was waiting for her laundry to be done when he approached her. They talked and started dating
‘I think I already told you: that happened to me. I had a terrible breakup and was in the laundry, and I was so upset. I still remember sitting, hugging my knees, waiting for my laundry to be done.
“And a police officer came in and he said, ‘Are you OK?’ And I say, “No, I’m not okay.” And I started talking to him, and I started dating him.”
“That’s hot!” Bush Hager, 41, commented on their cuteness, prompting laughter from both her co-star and the audience.
“It was hot,” Kotb admitted with an ear-to-ear grin.
‘What’s the mistake there? In the laundrette?’ Bush Hager asked. “That’s a Colleen Hoover book, girl!”
Kobt told the former first daughter that they “dated for a while,” but once she got back to her old self, it became clear that they weren’t really right for each other.
“I realized he was a savior, and after a while I didn’t need saving anymore,” she said.
The author of The Hope is a Rainbow explained that he continued to help her in ways she found “irritating” once she was no longer heartbroken.
“It was hot,” Kotb admitted with an ear-to-ear grin, but she noted that their relationship didn’t work out because he was a “savior” and she “didn’t need a rescue.”
Bush Hager has been eager to start Kotb since breaking up with her fiancé Joel Schiffman in January 2022
Kotb and Schiffman remain co-parents to their daughters Haley, six, and Hope, four, and she is optimistic that she will one day find love again.
“I’m actually a strong person, you just met me when I wasn’t, and now I am (again),” she said of their romance ending.
Kotb’s relationship with the police officer may not have worked out, but Bush Hager was all about their love story – even if it was short-lived.
‘But he also brought you back to life. Wow!’ she said. ‘You have to go back to that laundromat! You never know who’s going to come in.”
Bush Hager has wanted to found Kotb since they started broke up with her fiancé Joel Schiffman in January 2022.
The former couple continues to raise their daughters Haley, six, and Hope, four, together, and she is optimistic that she will one day find love again.
Earlier in the segment, Bush Hager admitted that she once almost got a Destiny’s Child tribute tattoo on her back after a breakup with an ex-boyfriend.
“I ended up seeing someone again about 47 times,” she remembers. “My friend, Tracy, said, ‘It’s enough, get up,’ and we went outside and danced and I almost got ‘Survivor’ tattooed on my back.”
Shocked by her confession, a stunned Kotb responded, “Wait, what?”
“That Destiny’s Child song was popular,” Bush Hager explained, before adding, “We went to the tattoo parlor on 6th Street. Thanks, Jesus, it was closed. Imagine if I got ‘Survivor’ tattooed?’