After commenting on Sabrina Carpenter and Barry Keoghan’s recent split, the co-hosts reflected on their own love lives during their 20s on the Wednesday, December 4, episode of Today with Hoda & Jenna.
Bush Hager, 43, asked the morning show mainstay, “Did you have a lot of relationships in your 20s?” The 60-year-old NBC anchor explained that while working as a young journalist, she would move around a lot, leading her to date different people in each place. “I moved from city to city when I was in local news, so you’d date someone in the city,” the broadcast journalist recounted.
Bush Hager interjected, saying the situation reminded her of the 2001 song “Area Codes,” where rapper Ludacris sings, “I’ve got h**s on different area codes.” She said, “It makes me think of that song ‘Area Codes’, remember? Ludacris is singing in my head ’cause you moved from city to city, and you had somebody in a different area code.”
Kotb — who shares adopted daughters Haley, 7, and Hope, 5, with ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman — explained finding partners in different cities is just what happens when you work in local news. “Well, you meet people, and then, you get another job, so you have to leave,” she remarked. However, Bush Hager was still shocked by this revelation. “So in every little tiny market, big markets alike, you had a different man?” she asked, to which Kotb replied, “Yes.”
After the audience laughed, Bush Hager insisted that the mom of two listen to the Ludacris track saying, “So, you had men all over the country?” “You gotta go back and listen to that song ‘Area Codes.'”
Before her eight-year relationship with Schiffman, 66, Kotb was married to University of New Orleans tennis coach Burzis Kanga from 2005 to 2008.
As for Bush Hager, she shared that while she “had several college boyfriends,” her one serious relationship was with her now-husband, Henry Chase Hager. The mom of three tied the knot with Hager, 46, in 2008, the pair share daughters Mila, 11, and Poppy, 9, and son Hal, 5.
