Savannah Guthrie has a second family in her “Today” co-hosts. Everyone from Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager to Carson Daly and Craig Melvin stepped up during Guthrie’s absence following the disappearance of her mother, Nancy Guthrie.
Now, Bush Hager and Sheinelle Jones are opening up about how Nancy’s abduction changed the show family.
‘Today’ Show Family
“Today With Jenna & Sheinelle” hosts reflected on the disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy during an interview with Page Six.
“We’re going to rally around our sister,” Sheinelle — who lost her husband, Uche Ojeh, to cancer in May 2025 — said. “She rallied around me. We know how to do that here.”
Jones previously opened up about how Savannah stepped up to help her following the death of her husband.
“There was one day Savannah came up to the hospital and she said, ‘You need to get out of here,'” she told Page Six in January. “We went to this little restaurant around the corner from the hospital and had margaritas, and I said, ‘You were my oxygen for the day, and sometimes I never know where my oxygen’s going to come from.'”
Following her mom’s February 1 disappearance, Savannah was absent from her hosting role for more than two months.
“[Savannah’s] heart is broken and we love her,” Bush Hager told the outlet.
Jones officially became Bush Hager’s co-host in January, just weeks before Nancy’s abduction.
“In any other matrix, it would’ve just been about us and the show,” she said, acknowledging that the emotional period changed how she approached her new job. “But we didn’t have time for that. I didn’t have time to worry about my hair or whether I was being funny. Real life was happening.”
She added, “It continues to bond us in ways we can’t even describe or make sense of.”
Nancy Guthrie Disappearance
Guthrie was reported missing after friends noticed her absence at her regular church service on February 1. She was last seen the previous evening during a family dinner at her daughter Annie Guthrie’s home.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department has been working with the FBI’s Phoenix Division on the case.
It was quickly revealed that the 84-year-old was abducted against her will from her home in Tucson, Arizona. After more than four months, the search for Guthrie continues.
Savannah ultimately returned to work in early April, after more than two months away.
Bush Hager and Jones addressed Guthrie’s disappearance on their show days after she went missing.
“The last 10 days have been constantly, even if you see it or you don’t, thinking about our friend Savannah, whom we love dearly and miss desperately, and her family as they search for her mother, Nancy,” Bush Hager said at the time.
Jones added, “I will say, even if we’re not talking about it every minute, we’re thinking about it every minute. It’s to the point where I know a lot of our colleagues, if the phone rings, or if we get a text from someone. You know, [we’re all] waiting for the latest information.”
According to Bush Hager, their show is different from the other “Today” segments, as it isn’t fully a news hour.
“What’s beautiful about our hour is that you can’t fake it,” she explained to Page Six. “We don’t have the news to fall back on. Our conversations have to be emotional and connected to what we’re actually going through.”
She added, “Every day we were thinking about her,” Bush Hager said. “How could we not talk about it? It was what was happening off camera. We’re not going to act like things are OK if they’re not. We’re bringing ourselves to the audience. It was a really hard time because we adore her so much, and it still is.”
