Hoda Kotb reveals she’s spending Christmas with ex Joel Schiffman

Hoda Kotbex fiance Joel Schiffman joins his family’s Christmas celebrations in 2024.

“For us, our Christmas is not a big one because it’s me, my kids, my mom, my sister, Joel,” Kotb said Tuesday. Today with Hoda and Jennawhich was pre-recorded. “We’re getting together. It’s a group and it’s kind of a cozy Christmas. So tonight we’re going to have cookies for Santa and carrots. He always seems to like cookies better.”

Kotb shares it two daughters — Haley, 7, and Hope, 5 — with Schiffman, 66. Ex quietly dated for two years before going public with their romance in 2015. After adopting Haley in 2017, Schiffman popped the question to Kotba in 2019, the same year they adopted Hope. However, Kotb revealed the January 2022 episode Hoda and Jenna which pair had decided to call it off after eight years together.

“We decided to start this new year and start it on our new journey as loving parents to our adorable, adorable children and as friends,” she explained on air at the time. “And it’s not like anything happened. They say that sometimes relationships are meant to exist for a reason, for a season or a lifetime. And I feel like ours should have been there for the season.”

Related: Today’s Hoda Kotb shows off her Christmas decorations in the suburbs

Hoda Kotbová misses the festive step into her first Christmas in her new home. “It’s all happening! Merry Everything!!🥰,” the 60-year-old Today coach wrote via Instagram on Sunday, December 22, alongside a round of festive photos, the first of which included a look at her living room’s holiday decorations. Hanging from Kotba (…)

Schiffman’s inclusion in this year’s holiday festivities is special because it’s the first Christmas Kotb and her girls will spend in their new suburban home. (Kotb announced in March that she and her children were moving outside of New York City.)

“I’m so excited because to have the stockings hanging in a place that you know is going to be where it’s going to hang for years – we just decided for the first time where the tree was going to go and we know from this day on it’s going to go here – all these great things, she said to her host, Jenna Bush Hager. “We decorated our house, like all those kinds of neat things.

Kotb went on to note that her new house has started to feel like home to her hosted her first Thanksgiving in space last month. “The fact that we were all sitting at the table together, and I imagine that at Christmas too,” she said. (Schiffman was not listed in Images on Instagram Kotb shared her Thanksgiving celebration.)

Over the weekend, Kotb teased Schiffman’s involvement in her Christmas plans. Sharing Photos from Instagram of her home’s holiday decorations, among the other family stockings hanging above the Kotba fireplace in the living room was a stocking with the name “Dad.”

“It’s all happening! Merry Everything!!🥰,” Kotb captioned the photos, which included a selfie of her getting hit in the face by a snowball while playing outside with Haley, Hope and her mom, Together.

Bush Hager, 43, shared her own holiday plans on Tuesday’s episode Hoda and Jennastating that it is her family’s “tradition” to travel to her home state of Texas for Christmas. (She shared by children Mila (11), Poppy (9) and Hal (5) with their husband, Henry Hager.)

“We’re out. Especially when we lived here in the city, it was so good for my kids because they didn’t know – I remember when Mila was 2 she said, “No stroller! No stroller!” because she had never seen a bug before.” she joked. “And my father (former President George W. Bush) was like, “Oh, Jenna.” You’re going to have to get her out.” So we go out, hike, hang. It’s just fun. And then the carolers come from this local church and sing, like, “Oh Happy Day,” which is my dad’s favorite. He wants it at his funeral.”