{"id":287868,"date":"2020-02-07T11:16:35","date_gmt":"2020-02-07T18:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/b1120599"},"modified":"2020-02-07T11:16:35","modified_gmt":"2020-02-07T18:16:35","slug":"watch-an-emotional-hoda-kotb-finally-meet-her-hero-oprah-winfrey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/music-news\/watch-an-emotional-hoda-kotb-finally-meet-her-hero-oprah-winfrey\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch an Emotional Hoda Kotb Finally Meet Her Hero Oprah Winfrey"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/akns-images.eonline.com\/eol_images\/Entire_Site\/202017\/rs_600x600-200207101341-600-Hoda-Oprah-Jenna.jpg?fit=around|600:467&amp;crop=600:467;center,top&amp;output-quality=90\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"photo-txt-0\" data-hook=\"scrollable-block\" readability=\"46.261538461538\">\n<section data-textblock-tracking=\"text-block-photo-text\" readability=\"35.292307692308\">\n<p>On Friday,&nbsp;<em>Today<\/em>&nbsp;co-host&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/hoda_kotb\">Hoda Kotb<\/a><\/strong> fulfilled a dream: Meeting <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/oprah_winfrey\">Oprah Winfrey<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The&nbsp;TV mogul greeted her with a big hug on the NBC morning show on Friday as she joined her and co-host&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/jenna_bush_hager\">Jenna Bush Hager<\/a><\/strong> in celebrating the program&#8217;s new live-audience studio.&nbsp;Kotb&nbsp;got very emotional, and was seen wiping away tears. She&nbsp;appeared to be in awe of her idol as she later reached for her hand as they all sat down. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.today.com\/video\/watch-hoda-kotb-meet-her-idol-oprah-for-the-1st-time-78309957914\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Watch video<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;OK, I just need a moment,&#8221; Kotb said. &#8220;Do you&nbsp;all feel like you just need a moment? I feel like I need a moment.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is so fun, guys,&#8221; Winfrey said. &#8220;I&#8217;m so happy to be here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kotb can thank Hager for the long-awaited meeting; she floated the idea to Winfrey during her Oprah&#8217;s 2020 Vision Tour last month..<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I told her, &#8216;You know, my New Year&#8217;s resolution was to see [you] again&#8230;but Hoda has never met you,'&#8221; Hager told <a href=\"https:\/\/pagesix.com\/2020\/02\/04\/jenna-bush-hager-sent-oprah-a-letter-wine-and-flowers-to-get-her-on-today\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Page Six<\/a>&nbsp;in comments posted on Tuesday. &#8220;And she said, &#8216;Well, we&#8217;re going to make that happen too.&#8217; I wrote her a letter [thanking] her for starting her tour with us and said, &#8216;There&#8217;s always a place if you ever want to come,&#8217; and then we had a phone call, and I sent wine to her whole team for helping with this interview. I sent flowers.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The wine is key to everything,&#8221; Hager added.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"text-2\" data-hook=\"scrollable-block\" readability=\"57\">\n<section data-textblock-tracking=\"text-block-text-only\" data-swiftype-index=\"false\" readability=\"4\">\n<p>On Monday, Hager surprised Kotb on Today with the news that Winfrey would be joining them on-air at the end of the week.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"html-external-3\" data-type=\"async\" data-hook=\"scrollable-block\" data-swiftype-index=\"false\" readability=\"43\">\n<section data-textblock-tracking=\"text-block-html-text\" data-swiftype-index=\"false\" readability=\"26\">\n<p>Winfrey told her on&nbsp;Friday&#8217;s&nbsp;show, &#8220;You manifested this.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I tried to manifest it, but really, all I wanted was this moment,&#8221; Hager said, gesturing towards Kotb and Winfrey.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Thank you,&#8221; Kotb said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I wanted this moment,&#8221; Hager said.<\/p>\n<p>Kotb and Winfrey then shared another hug.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Thank you. I can&#8217;t tell you, Oprah, I feel like I&#8217;ve been in this business 100 years&#8230;you know when people say, like, &#8216;You mean to much to me,&#8217; but they&#8217;ve never met you and I know maybe it does seems a little weird, but this is really one of those moments for me,&#8221; Kotb told her.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"text-5\" data-hook=\"scrollable-block\" readability=\"68\">\n<section data-textblock-tracking=\"text-block-text-only\" data-swiftype-index=\"false\" readability=\"26\">\n<p>Winfrey rose to fame in the &#8217;80s with her syndicated daytime talk show <em>The Oprah Winfrey Show<\/em>, which aired for 25 years until 2011. She later launched her own cable network, OWN, and continues to periodically interview guests.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I watched you over the years, I&#8217;ve watched you lift people up,&#8221; Kotb told Winfrey. &#8220;There&#8217;s only a couple people on the Earth who you want to emulate in our business. I watched you like, hold people&#8217;s hearts in your hand, and I remember thinking, like, how does she do that? And you did it in such a way that was always so tender and real, and the fact that you&#8217;re sitting here on this day is really kinda blowing my mind.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I mean, I&#8217;m 55 or 56, nobody knows,&#8221; she joked. &#8220;Who cares. But it doesn&#8217;t matter. It just shows you like, the kid in you in still in there when you walk in the door.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"text-7\" data-hook=\"scrollable-block\" readability=\"56\">\n<section data-textblock-tracking=\"text-block-text-only\" data-swiftype-index=\"false\" readability=\"2\">\n<p>(E! and NBC are part of the NBCUniversal family.)<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"tune-in-8\" data-hook=\"scrollable-block\" readability=\"32\">\n<p class=\"tune-in__text\" data-swiftype-index=\"false\">Watch <i>E! News<\/i> weekday mornings at 7 a.m.!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/1120599\/watch-an-emotional-hoda-kotb-finally-meet-her-hero-oprah-winfrey?cmpid=rss-000000-rssfeed-365-topstories&#038;utm_source=eonline&#038;utm_medium=rssfeeds&#038;utm_campaign=rss_topstories\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: E! Online<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday,&nbsp;Today&nbsp;co-host&nbsp;Hoda Kotb fulfilled a dream: Meeting Oprah Winfrey. The&nbsp;TV mogul greeted her with a big hug on the NBC morning show on Friday as she joined her and co-host&nbsp;Jenna Bush Hager in celebrating the program&#8217;s new live-audience studio.&nbsp;Kotb&nbsp;got very emotional, and was seen wiping away tears. She&nbsp;appeared to be in awe of her idol [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-music-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-01 02:58:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KIDN - The Lift FM","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}