9 Things You Might Not Know About Savannah Guthrie

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Savannah Guthrie needs no introduction. She's been a familiar face on the "Today" show for over a decade, and before that, she graced people's TV screens as they tuned in for the news. Guthrie, who probably feels like an extended member of the family for many of the Americans who have been watching her for years, has made many headlines throughout her career, and many more Americans learned her name when her mother, Nancy Guthrie, disappeared in February 2026. While the "Today" star is well known, there are some things even avid fans might not know about Guthrie. For one, she wasn't born American. Guthrie was born in Melbourne, Australia, but her parents returned to Tucson, Arizona, when she was about 2 years old. She went to school there at the Amphitheater High School, and it just so happens that NFL player Michael Bates was one of her classmates.

Fans have been along for the roller coaster that has been Guthrie's career. Throughout the traumatic events the Guthrie family has weathered to Guthrie's most talked-about live TV moments, Americans have been watching. Then, in May 2026, they were in for a treat when Guthrie announced that she would be co-hosting NBC's new half-hour game show, "Wordle," which will be executively produced by beloved late night talk show host Jimmy Fallon. Guthrie revealed on the "Today" show that the new venture has been two years in the making, and that she was incredibly thankful for the team who were willing to delay some plans as she navigated her mother's disappearance. "When everything happened with me and my family, they just stopped everything and said, 'We'll wait for you,'" Guthrie said, per Hello! Here are a few other things you might not know about Guthrie.

Savannah Guthrie might be a renowned journalist and talk show host these days, but she also happens to be a lawyer. Guthrie studied journalism at the University of Arizona and graduated in 1993. While she went on to have a successful career as a journalist after graduation, Guthrie decided to expand her horizons, and subsequently attended Georgetown University Law Center. She sat her bar exam in 2002 and scored the highest in her state that year. The Arizona bar isn't the only one Guthrie passed either. She also took the bar exam in D.C., then went on to work for a law firm as a litigation associate.

Guthrie might no longer work as a lawyer, but she's learned plenty from her time working in the world of law. In 2023, she was invited to give the commencement speech at Georgetown Law School, and she recounted how pivoting to law was, ironically, what helped her land a job at NBC News. Guthrie went from working for the D.C. law firm to taking a job as a correspondent for CourtTV, which then led to her career at NBC. "Anything interesting you want to do, anything meaningful you want to accomplish, it is waiting for you, it is possible for you, but it is on the other side of a big risk' on the other side of a big bet," Guthrie said in her speech, per Today. "It might work out, it might not. But the riskier step will be not to try," she added.

September 11, 2001, will be forever ingrained in the world's memory. Even more so for Savannah Guthrie, who was on the ground covering the attacks on the Pentagon. She recalled that fateful day on the 20th anniversary of the terror attack, noting that she was still at law school and working part-time as a reporter. She told NBC News that it was "surreal" to make her way to the Pentagon and see the streets of Washington, D.C., deserted. "I remember that the smoke [was] still flowing out of the side of the building," she said. She also met a woman that day who was waiting, hoping for her husband to be rescued alive from the wreckage. "I never forgot her name," Guthrie said. "I actually looked up later in The Washington Post the list of all of those who had passed at the Pentagon. I looked for his name, and it was there. He never came out."

The 9/11 terror attacks had a lasting impact on those who covered the aftermath, with clinical psychologist Kevin Becker telling Journalism UK that reporters are often exposed to traumatic events and should keep in mind that they need to take care of their mental health. "The reality is that traumatic events can resurface in our lives and memories at virtually any point, especially around anniversary dates," Becker noted. "Journalists should understand that this is an expected part of the recovery process. Traumatic events are not simply witnessed, processed, and expelled from our consciousness; they are slowly digested over time as they become more and more integrated into who we are and how we experience the world."

Savannah Guthrie lives an incredibly lavish life, and it's in no small part thanks to her gig as an anchor on the "Today" show. While she loves the job, she admitted that her promotion to co-anchor in 2012 wasn't quite as joyous as one might have expected it to be. Guthrie landed the job after Ann Curry was summarily fired by NBC, and she was initially shocked by the promotion. "I came at a time of a lot of controversy for the show, and it wasn't, I don't think, a happy occasion, really — for anyone, including me," she told Parade in January 2025. "I was as terrified as I could possibly be because the bosses at the time had made a decision, and I quite literally was the last to know, and I was so afraid, and I was pretty sure that I wouldn't last."

While speaking to Vogue in 2012 after the promotion, Guthrie chose her words carefully when she was asked whether she wanted the job. "I am incredibly grateful to be given an opportunity to do a job that a lot of women I respect and admire have done before me ... and I respect that the transition has been difficult for our viewers. Change is hard," she said, per HuffPost. It didn't help that the show's ratings were dragging at the time, and even with Guthrie taking Curry's place, viewership didn't really increase. In fact, ratings took another dip as viewers tuned out in response to Curry's controversial firing. Luckily for Guthrie, the show managed to survive this significant bump in the road.

Given her fame, Savannah Guthrie has been the subject of many rumors that turned out to be true. One thing that isn't conjecture is her ability to ask the tough questions in her capacity as a journalist. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise, given Guthrie's law background, as no one can ask tough questions quite like a lawyer. Pair that with her journalism background, and it makes sense that Guthrie equally impressed and infuriated people with her relentless questioning of President Donald Trump during a 2020 town hall. The event took place less than 20 days before the presidential election that would see former President Joe Biden emerge as the victor, and Forbes dedicated an entire column to praising Guthrie's conduct at the town hall, noting that she managed to get the elusive Trump to actually answer the questions she posed. Anyone who's paid attention to the president's conduct during these events will know this was no small feat.

Guthrie's difficult 2026 took a terrifying twist when her mom was reported missing, and some pointed out that her journalistic expertise will help her deal with the relentless media attention. Retired FBI Agent Maureen O'Connell told Express in May 2026 that Guthrie had covered similar cases before in her reporting and was now facing the situation from the victim's side. "I feel so bad for her, but at the same time, she's also been the one asking these hard questions before," O'Connell explained, adding that she's more likely to handle the questions about her mother's case better than if she hadn't been the one asking the hard questions to people in her situation before.

Savannah Guthrie's "Today" co-host Craig Melvin is happily married with two kids, but when he first started dating his wife, Lindsay Czarniak, the two had to cut their date night short because Czarniak was slated to appear on Guthrie's MSNBC show, "The Daily Rundown," which she hosted alongside Chuck Todd. Guthrie was friends with Czarniak before she started dating Melvin, and she told Parade in 2025 that she was excited when she learned they were together. Melvin was not thrilled that his date night had to be end early because Guthrie was having Czarniak on her show the following day, however. "I [thought], 'Screw Chuck and Savannah [for] taking you away early,'" he told Parade. Melvin still tuned in to watch Czarniak on the show the following morning. "I just wanted to make sure she wasn't trying to blow me off, so I woke up the next morning to actually watch, and there she was. So, it's kind of full-circle," he told the outlet. 

It all worked out in the end, and Melvin and Guthrie remain good friends. After Hoda Kotb's departure from "Today," Melvin then became Guthrie's new co-anchor. Amid his new role, reports emerged in March 2026 that Melvin was deeply hurt by the fact that Kotb, who returned to help out in Guthrie's absence, got to interview the bereaved "Today" star about her mother's disappearance instead of him. "Craig is absolutely devastated he didn't get that interview," an insider alleged to the Daily Mail. "He thought it was his moment with Savannah — and it never even came his way." A spokesperson for "Today" insisted to the Daily Mail that Melvin was nothing but supportive of Kotb doing the interview.

Savannah Guthrie's divorce was nastier than anyone realized, and even though it happened way back in 2009, Guthrie only started broaching the subject years later, and even then, she didn't offer up the gory details. While making an appearance on Hoda Kotb's "Joy Rides" series in January 2026, Guthrie said her divorce from her first husband, Mark Orchard, was one of the most painful things she ever had to endure. "I was in my 30s. I felt old, but I now see that I was pretty young, and I was sad about it," she admitted, explaining that this was also around the time she started working at NBC. The experience of seeing one dream come true while another shattered to pieces was jarring. "It made me have to really dig deep, and I felt like a failure," Guthrie told Kotb.

The "Today" star also touched on her divorce while sitting down for an interview on the "Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky" podcast in July 2025. She explained why she hesitated to chronicle what happened between her and Orchard in her book, "Mostly What God Does." "I don't want to talk about getting divorced," Guthrie admitted. "It was horrible and sad, and it broke my heart, and it took me years to recover."

During a 2011 Q&A on "Today," Savannah Guthrie answered some of her fans' most burning questions, and in the process revealed that her favorite sport is tennis. "That's really not because I'm that good at it but because it's the only sport I can kind of do," she shared. Given her love for tennis, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that Guthrie's celebrity crush is Roger Federer. She once confessed this while making an appearance on The Ellen Show, which led the host, Elle DeGeneres, to send her a life-size cardboard cutout of the tennis star. During a 2018 chat with Degeneres, Guthrie revealed she'd kept the cutout. "We have a house upstate, and we have a bar in the basement we call the bomb shelter, and Roger is the bartender," she shared.

As it turned out , Federer's team reached out to Guthrie after DeGeneres broadcasted the "Today" star's crush on him to the world, and she was asked to join him for a celebrity tennis tournament. Guthrie admitted that her tennis game was terrible but that she had a great time. "I kept missing the ball," she recalled. "And Roger's like, 'Savannah, stop looking at me, and start looking at the ball.'" She told DeGeneres that Federer "exceeded" her expectations and that meeting him wasn't awkward at all. "He was really nice. He was like, 'Oh, I feel like I know you,'" she shared.

Savannah Guthrie might be brave enough to play tennis with her celebrity crush despite not being great at the sport, but going anywhere near frogs is where she draws the line. Her fear was documented in 2011 when she and her "Today" co-stars attended a preview of a frog-jumping jubilee, and Guthrie couldn't get away from the amphibians fast enough.

In 2017, while sitting down for a chat on The Ellen Show, Ellen DeGeneres then presented Guthrie with a giant frog in an attempt to help her face her fear. Guthrie jumped out of her chair and ran in circles around the studio as DeGeneres followed, frog in hand. "Please, please no!" she cried (via YouTube). "Please no, I'm serious. I don't understand it either! I'm gonna go to therapy!" The amphibian in question turned out not to be real, but Guthrie still didn't want it anywhere near her.

She addressed the fear once again on "Today" in 2018 during a roundtable with Megyn Kelly, admitting that she's had it since childhood. She recalled how she would hear frogs croaking at night after storms and was too afraid to get out of bed one morning because she was convinced they were hiding under her bed. She had her father check that there were none before she agreed to get up.

Savannah Guthrie might be someone many look up to, but she has some heroes of her own, so to speak. During a 2011 Q&A on "Today," she revealed that her mother, Nancy Guthrie, is her role model. "I'm just really proud of her," Guthrie said, explaining how Nancy was a stay-at-home-mom who was always there for her and her siblings growing up. "When I was a teenager, we lost my dad, and at that point my mom went back to work, and she had a whole career, and to me, she's just an inspiration," Guthrie said.

When the "Today" show host's mother went missing on February 1, 2026, it understandably made headlines, and Guthrie found herself having to weather one of the hardest moments of her life. As the search for Nancy failed to yield results, Guthrie and her family grew increasingly anxious, with the star telling Hoda Kotb during a March 2026 interview on "Today," "We are in agony. It is unbearable," per the BBC. When Mother's Day arrived and Nancy remained missing, Guthrie took to Instagram to pay tribute to her mom. She posted a video featuring clips and photographs of her mother, captioning it, "Mother, daughter, sister, Nonie — we miss you with every breath. We will never stop looking for you. We will never be at peace until we find you." She once again asked the public for help to find Nancy. "Someone knows something that can make the difference. Call 1800CALLFBI. You can be anonymous and the reward remains available. Please keep praying. Bring her home."