Jenna Bush Hager and Hoda Kotb held a special broadcast of Today focused on wellness, which appears to be the next venture Kotb will explore after she retires from daytime television in 2025. But the co-hosts took a moment to both lament and celebrate Kotb’s imminent exit, with some much-needed humor from Bush Hager.

“When you love somebody so much the way that I love Hoda — and I’ve watched her dream about this. She’s talked to me about it, I didn’t know she was gonna go away, but I knew it was in her,” Bush Hager said of Kotb’s plans of working in the wellness space. “I also knew this is the type of woman that, if she didn’t follow exactly who she is, exactly what her dreams are, then it wouldn’t be right.”

But that doesn’t appear to make it any easier for Bush Hager to accept Kotb’s retirement.

“I will say, I walk around, even [in Austin, Texas], and people are like. ‘Congratulations, Hoda!’ And I feel like the girl that just got dumped,” she joked. “People are like, ‘You made the best choice, Hoda,’ and I’m like, did she? Did she make the best choice?”

Kotb also revealed how Bush Hager initially took the news, which she reportedly shared just days before she went public.

“I go, ‘Jenna, I have to tell you something,'” Kotb recalled. “I told Jenna and our executive producer Talia [Parkinson-Jones] and, before I even had a chance to say the words, both Jenna and Talia go, ‘No, no, no, no!'”

Bush Hager admitted she had a “guttural” reaction.

“I was like, ‘No, you can’t!'” she said. “And then I had to text her in the evening to apologize and I said, ‘I’m so sorry I said no. You follow your dreams, you do it and I love you.'”

She also revealed that her kids had a similar reaction when she shared the news with them. “When I told my kids that Hoda’s leaving I may as well have said that daddy’s leaving,” she said. “They couldn’t understand it.”

But the Today co-hosts still have quite a bit of time left before Kotb officially retires from NBC. The official date for her last broadcast has not been announced yet, but she plans to stay on the show through early 2025.

It looks like Kotb may not be going far from daytime television, however. The network is reportedly searching for ways to keep Kotb on the air, whether that be on primetime or late-night specials.

Today with Hoda & Jenna airs on weekdays at 10/9c on NBC.