Savannah Guthrie’s family crisis underscores the ‘Today’ show’s deep bonds

(CNN) — NBC used to promote the cast of the “Today” show as “America’s first family,” and this agonizing week has shown why.

Savannah Guthrie’s co-hosts and colleagues have extended their support, both on-air and off, as the authorities try to find her 84-year-old mother, Nancy.

Guthrie’s co-host Craig Melvin and other stars of the four-hour-long show are genuine friends with her outside of work, and Guthrie has been texting with them throughout the week.

The morning show’s coverage has reflected those close bonds — and the fact that Nancy has been a frequent guest over the years. “For all of us who have gotten to know her and love her, it is personal,” Jenna Bush Hager said on-air Wednesday.

In some ways, the “Today” show has been at its best this week — even though the circumstances are among the worst imaginable.

The morning show helped alert the public to Nancy’s disappearance on Monday, when Savannah released a statement via the show urging anyone with information to contact the authorities in Tucson, Arizona.

That night, Savannah posted on social media asking for prayers. “I hit my knees and prayed,” co-host Carson Daly said the next morning. “I don’t think I’ve ever prayed for anything harder in my life.”

Television marketers often — sometimes very cynically — try to position morning shows as idealized families, even when the reality is far from warm and fuzzy.

But the current condition of “Today” needs no marketing polish. The hosts actually get along well, socialize off-camera and spend time with each other’s families.

A person close to the show said “faith is a big uniting factor” for the hosts, some of whom have been known to go to church together.

Some of the off-air birthday celebrations and vacation pictures wind up on Instagram, advancing the show’s image, but some don’t.

Staffers at the show say Savannah deserves much of the credit for the strong behind-the-scenes connections, since she has been on “Today” for 15 years.

The bonds have also been deepened by heartbreak. Sheinelle Jones’ husband, Uche Ojeh, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer in late 2023, and Jones was absent from the show for several months before he died in May 2025.

Savannah was at the hospital for Ojeh’s first surgery, Jones recalled later.

She told People magazine that Savannah also grew closer with Jones and Ojeh’s children during the cancer battle: “I knew that Savannah lost her father around the same age that my kids lost their father, but I look back now and I’m like, ‘That’s why she was so amazing because she knows it and she had a mom who lived it.’ She was able to approach it as a daughter, but also remembering how her mom went through it.”

When the ‘family’ matters

The show’s history helps explain why these moments resonate so deeply with viewers.

“Today” invented the very format of morning TV back in the 1950s. The idea, from the very beginning, was to ease viewers into a new day with amiable hosts who covered the news, cracked jokes and fit right into viewers’ at-home routines.

Thus, shows like “Today” are all about chemistry, and there have been chapters in the show’s past when it was noticeably absent. Chats on the couch looked uncomfortable; segments showing group outings felt forced.

When viewers have sensed family dysfunction, they’ve changed channels en masse, most memorably when NBC executives decided to demote co-host Ann Curry in 2012.

Curry’s teary-eyed farewell show made viewers uncomfortable and shattered the “family” image that NBC had spent untold millions of dollars selling.

As one savvy viewer told The Associated Press, “the PR machine at NBC spent an enormous amount of time and effort convincing me that the ‘Today’ show team was actually part of my family, ‘America’s First Family.’ Guess what? They were right. These did feel like family members. So this is how you are going to treat a member of your family?”

Many “Today” viewers tuned to ABC’s “Good Morning America,” where executives were marketing a new “family” of hosts.

After NBC began losing to ABC in the ratings race, NBC hired a research firm to make recommendations. One of the top items on the fix-it list was “our family needs to be fun again.”

Savannah Guthrie was promoted to co-host that year. She had nothing to do with Curry’s departure from the show, but worried at the time about being blamed for it.

Some Curry fans hesitated to embrace Savannah, but that didn’t last long, and she soon became a centerpiece of “Today.” The show gradually regained its lead in the key ratings demographic of viewers ages 25 to 54.

Last December, NBC trumpeted a ten-year winning streak for “Today” in that metric.

The show is a platform for all the different parts of Guthrie’s personality: Interviewer, jokester, legal correspondent, amateur guitarist.

She is now one of the best-known personalities at NBC, anchoring election nights and hosting events like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

She was set to co-host NBC’s telecast of the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Milan on Friday, but the trip was scrapped due to her family crisis.

Melvin “will also remain stateside,” the network said Wednesday, instead of hosting “Today” and some late-night Olympics coverage from Milan.

Meanwhile, security has been stepped up at “Today,” sources told CNN. The additional security measures were implemented out of an abundance of caution and may help alleviate some of the stress the show’s hosts feel as they talk on-air every morning about the unsolved mystery.

Journalists at NBC and elsewhere continue to wonder if Nancy Guthrie was targeted due to Savannah’s high-profile work, though local authorities have said there is no “credible information” pointing that way.

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