It’s been decades since Hoda Kotb lost to a heart attack, but that moment from her college years remains vivid in her memory, as does the support she received from her best friend at Virginia Tech during the painful time. "My dad died suddenly, out of the blue, healthy as can be — he was actually exercising," the TODAY co-anchor told during . She explained she was always the type of person to "push" and "bury" down any feelings associated with a difficult circumstance in her life.
"I've changed my beliefs now," she said, "but I believed certain pain you were meant to carry — not everything gets talked out." She believed she had to "tuck" the pain away and that it was "just a part" of life's journey — until she realized that sometimes you need to find someone whom you "trust completely" to be there to "hold" the pain with you. “I was marching around college, not paying attention.
I used to wear glasses, I took my glasses off. I didn’t know up was down, down was up,” she continued. There was one moment, however, Hoda still remembers to this day.
"I was in a class sitting there listening to some teacher talk, and they handed out a test," she explained. "I looked at the test, and I got up, and I put on my backpack. I'm like, 'I'm probably going to flunk out of school.
' I took my backpack, and the teacher was going, 'Hey! You're going to fail my class if you walk out that door.'" Hoda said she couldn't continue sitting there and walked out the door. She recalled that.
