Hoda Kotb’s last day co-hosting the fourth hour of Today was on January 10. Since then, Jenna Bush Hager’s been holding down the fort with a series of guest co-hosts, including Scarlett Johansson, Tyra Banks, Dwyane Wade, Halle Berry, and Leslie Bibb. At this point I had just assumed that they were going to keep the rotating co-hosts thing going for as long as possible. Well, the wait is over! Jenna announced her new co-host on Tuesday’s show: Sheinelle Jones! Sheinelle, who currently co-hosts the show’s third hour, starts on January 8. The hour will be renamed Today With Jenna & Sheinelle.

After nearly a year of rotating guest co-hosts including Brooke Shields, Olivia Munn and Scarlett Johansson, the Today With Jenna & Friends host revealed that Today’s Sheinelle Jones will join [Jenna Bush Hager] as her permanent co-host in the new year.

“Today, I am so thrilled to announce I have found my forever friend, and we are going to start a brand new journey in January,” Jenna said during the Dec. 9 episode of the morning show. “I couldn’t be more excited to share this person with you all. You all know her. She’s an extraordinary broadcaster, but more importantly, she exemplifies exactly what this show is all about.”

For her part, Sheinelle is equally as thrilled to join the fourth hour of the NBC News broadcast, adding, “I look back at my career, and it was just like one market at a time, you know, things just kept happening. And so now to have a show like this is beyond my wildest dreams. This is the real deal, and I get to do it with Jenna.”

The pair both grew emotional detailing their long friendship, as Jenna added, “To get to sit next to Sheinelle, I’ve known her for a decade, but to get to fall even more in love with her will be a beautiful chapter in this show.”

Though speculation swirled for months that oft-recurring cohosts like Matt Rogers or Regina Hall could be poised to take over the vacant seat left by Hoda Kotb in January, Sheinelle will join the newly-coined Today with Jenna & Sheinelle beginning Jan. 12.

The 47-year-old joined the Today family in October 2014 as a coanchor of Weekend Today and has hosted the Third Hour of Today since January 2019.

But more recently, Sheinelle has been focusing on her personal life, taking a nearly nine-month hiatus to support her family while her husband Uche Ojeh battled brain cancer. Following his death in May, she returned to the morning news show and called her fellow Today co-hosts—Savannah Guthrie, Craig Melvin, Al Roker, Dylan Dreyer and Jenna—her “family.”

“You guys have been my oxygen,” she said upon her return in September. “And you guys at home, all the messages and prayers, I’m so thankful.”

[From E! News Online]

Congratulations to Sheinelle! I know she’ll do a great job and I am so excited for her. When Jenna brought her out, she spoke about how happy her children were for her and that there “was so much joy” in her house after she told them. She also mentioned that she could picture her husband cheering her on from heaven, which made me tear up a little bit. Sheinelle guest hosted alongside Jenna for the week of September 22-26, and the two of them used to fill in for Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda together before KLG left. They have great chemistry. I wonder if Jenna and the Today producers always knew that Sheinelle was the one and were holding the space open for her.

Sheinelle also shared on air that she’d spoken with Hoda on Monday night and received “45 seconds of wisdom that changed me.” I love that! It’s great to hear stories of women supporting other women in the industry, and Hoda has always come across as a real one.

Here’s the video of the announcement. It’s really sweet:

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

photos credit Getty and screenshots from YouTube