Hoda Kotb announces she is leaving TODAY: ‘I will miss you all’

Hoda Kotb has announced that she is leaving TODAY early next year, but will remain part of the NBC family. She tearfully recounted on TODAY on Sept. 26 about how her 60th birthday celebration in August prompted a decision to make a change. “I realized that it was time for me to turn the page at 60, and to try something new,” she said. “I remembered standing outside looking at these beautiful bunch of people with these gorgeous signs, and I thought, ‘This is what the top of the wave feels like for me.’ And I thought it can’t get better, and I decided that this is the right time for me to kind of move on.” Hoda’s intention to spend more time with her daughters, Haley, 7, and Hope, 5, also factored into her decision. “Obviously I had my kiddos late in life, and I was thinking that they deserve a bigger piece of my time pie that I have,” she said. “I feel like we only have a finite amount of time.”And so, with all that being said, this is the hardest thing in the world.” She said she…