Former TODAY co-host Kathie Lee Gifford divides her time between her kids and grandkids as she , and she still has plenty of pep as she visits her old stomping ground, Studio 1A. She walks through the halls, greeting close friend and former partner-in-crime Hoda Kotb and all of the familiar behind-the-scenes crew members who still make TODAY run. Between on-camera chats with Hoda about her new book, “ ,” Gifford sits down in the green room to catch up with TODAY.
com about as a of two and grandmother of three. Gifford is known as someone who freely speaks her mind, but she tries to stand back in order to let her children, Cody and Cassidy, find their own way as parents. “I have raised them to be full-fledged functioning God-loving, funny, good people.
And they don’t need me all the time. They just they just want to live their lives,” she says. Gifford isn't totally hands-off when it comes to grandmotherly advice, however.
She is always just a phone call away. “I’ve told them, since they turned 21, if you need me, call me,” she says. “And if you want me there, I’ll be there.
Other than that, you’re on your own. I raised you; your Daddy and I did right by you.” Calling her children “phenomenal parents,” Gifford mentions that they are very “hands-on” in a way that she herself couldn’t always be when she was a young mother.
“I had my babies and came back after five weeks to work,” she says about her short maternity leave while filming “Live .
