Hoda Kotb spends Christmas with ex-fiance Joel Shipman and kids

Kutb admittedThe ex-fiancé of Joel Shipman Joined her family’s Christmas celebrations in 2024.

Kotb, 60, shared photos on Wednesday, Dec. 25, of herself and Shipman, 66, with their daughters, Hailey, 7, and Hope, 5, in matching pajamas. The Today anchor previously hinted that she would reunite with Shipman over the holidays.

“For us, our Christmas isn’t huge because it’s me, my kids, my mom, my sister, Joel,” Kutb shared on the Tuesday, Dec. 24, episode of Today with Hoda and Jennapre-recorded. “We get together. It’s the group, and it’s kind of just a nice Christmas. So, we’re going to put out cookies tonight for Santa and the carrot. He always seems to like the cookies better.”

the exes Dated quietly for two years before going public with their romance in 2015. After adopting Haley in 2017, Shipman popped the question to Pole in 2019, the same year they adopted Hope. However, Kutb revealed on the January 2022 episode of Hoda and Jenna that the couple had decided to stop it After eight years together.

“We decided that we will start the new year and we will start it in our new way as loving parents of our lovely and delightful children and as friends,” she explained in the broadcast at the time. “And it’s not like anything happened. They say sometimes relationships are meant to be there for a reason, for a season or a lifetime. And I feel like ours is meant to be there for a season.”

Shipman’s inclusion in this year’s holiday festivities is special because this is the first Christmas Pole and her daughters will spend in their new suburban home. (Qutb announced in March that she and her children were Moved out of New York.)

“I’m so excited because they’re going to hang socks where you know they’re going to be where they’re going to be for years — just, for the first time, we’ve decided where the tree is going to go, and we know from today on, this is where it’s going to go — all that cool stuff,” she told the co-host its, Jenna Bush Hagar. “We decorated our house, like, all kinds of neat things like that.”

Qutb continued and noted that her new home was starting to feel like home after her Hosted her first Thanksgiving in space last month. “The fact that we all sat together at a table, and I imagine that at Christmas too,” she stated. (Schiffman did not appear in Instagram photos Kutb shared her Thanksgiving celebration.)

Kutb teased Shipman’s participation in her Christmas plans this weekend. Sharing Instagram photos Among the holiday decorations of her home, a sock with the name “Dad” was displayed among the other socks of the family hanging above the fireplace in Kotb’s living room.

“Everything is happening! Happy everyone!! 🥰,” Kotb captioned the photos, which included a selfie of herself getting hit in the face by a snowball while playing outside with Haley, Hope and her mother, together.

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

“We’re outside. 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 two, she’d say, ‘No buggy! No buggy!’ Because she’s never seen a bug before,” she joked. “And my father (former president George W. Bush) was like, ‘Oh, Jenna. You’ll have to take her out.’ So we go out, we travel, we hang out. It’s just fun. And then, singers come from this local church and they sing, like, ‘Oh Happy Day,’ which is my dad’s favorite. He wants it at his funeral.”