Savannah Guthrie has talked about her “lifelong” grief over her father’s death and how the sudden loss propelled her to the career she has today.
The Today co-anchor reflected on the pivotal moment in her life during her Brooke Shields performance What now? podcast, in which she recalls how she was 16 when her father, Charles Guthrie, died of a heart attack.
Guthrie, 51, explained that she was 13 and a freshman in high school when he had his first heart attack, but she didn’t realize the health consequences at the time.
“I don’t think we understood how serious that was,” she said. And three years later he had another heart attack, and it was fatal. It was so unexpected.’
Savannah Guthrie, 51, opened up about her grief over the death of her father, Charles Guthrie, during her performance in Brooke Shields’s Now What? podcast
The Today star explained that she was 13 and a freshman in high school when her father had his first heart attack. Three years later, he died of another heart attack
The broadcast journalist shared how she still mourns the loss of her father more than three decades later.
“I think it changes everything. I always think of it as if on our calendars we have BC and AD. There is a before and after. It’s just a sharp dividing line,” she explained.
“There’s before my father died and there’s after, and it’s profound. Grieving is a lifelong process. I really believe that. There is acute sadness.
“There are several moments of sadness, but I remember then, when I was a late teen, I thought, I have a cup of sadness now. It’s like a cup of water and I’m going to empty this cup for the rest of my life,” she continued.
And sometimes it comes out in buckets. And sometimes it’s a little sprinkle and sometimes I can just hold it and nothing comes out. But every last drop of this cup will not be empty until I leave this world.
“I will always bear this grief. It doesn’t mean I’m not happy, that I’m not happy, but it’s part of me.’
Guthrie, who grew up in Arizona with her brother Camron and sister Annie, explained that her father’s death made her “more serious internally.”
“When you lose a parent so suddenly, it’s so shocking when you’re 16, you just have some knowledge,” she said. “You just know something about the world that hopefully others don’t need to know.”
“There’s before my father died and there’s after, and it’s profound. Grieving is a lifelong process. I really believe that. There is acute sadness,” she told Shields
Guthrie often pays tribute to her father on special occasions, and she remains close to her mother, Nancy Guthrie (pictured), who celebrated her 81st birthday in January.
Guthrie and her husband, Mike Feldman, have two children together, eight-year-old Vale and six-year-old Charley, who was named after her late father.
Guthrie now lives in New York City with her husband, Mike Feldman, and their children, eight-year-old Vale and six-year-old Charley, who was named after her late father.
The mother-of-two said she’s not sure if her father’s death has changed her outlook on parenting or her health, but she believes it led her to a career in journalism.
“I know it changed me and probably changed the whole trajectory of my life,” she told Shields. “I often think that I would have been completely different if my father had lived. I just don’t know if I would have chosen this career. I don’t know if I would have left home. I might have stayed in my hometown.
“I don’t know what I would have done, but I know it fundamentally changed everything. And some things have changed for the better, in the sense of, I know my heart is more tender because of it.”
Guthrie often pays tribute to her father on special occasions, and she remains close to her mother, Nancy Guthrie, who celebrated her 81st birthday in January.
Last year, she shared how her mother was selfless encouraged her to move to Montana for her first editing job when she was 21.
Guthrie explained that she lived at home throughout college and would have found another job closer to home if her mother had asked her to.
‘We had no money to pay for the dormitory. And that was the first thing, but the other thing was that my sister and I really felt like we had to stay with my mom and not leave her alone,” she recalled. “But when I moved to Butte, Montana, this was it. And it was very hard for me to leave her.’
Guthrie said it was her mother who urged her to go, telling her, “If you can’t leave me, then I haven’t done my job, Savannah.”
“It’s not because she didn’t want me to stay. Of course she wanted me to stay,” she added. “But she says, ‘I’m not going to get in the way of your dreams. I’m going to tell you, go, go, go, go.'”