There is something about the first day of school that makes time suddenly visible.
For Hoda Kotb, that happened again this September when she stood outside with her two daughters, Haley Joy and Hope Catherine, before sending them off for another school year. Haley was beginning fourth grade. Hope was entering second. Their father, Hoda’s former fiancé Joel Schiffman, was there too, turning an ordinary September morning into a rare family photograph.
Hoda’s caption captured her disbelief perfectly: “It’s here! First day of school. 4th and 2nd grade! Whaaaatttt?” (Just Jared)
The reaction from longtime followers was understandable. Haley is now 9 and Hope is 7, and the little girls viewers remember seeing in Hoda’s arms have grown dramatically. Recent photographs show them standing beside their mother with backpacks ready, long dark hair and increasingly distinct personalities of their own.
But claims that the girls now “look like Mom” carry an especially sweet meaning in this family. Hoda did not give birth to Haley or Hope. She adopted them. Whatever resemblance fans believe they see is not biological — it is the kind people often notice after years of watching a parent and children grow together.
The New School Photos Made Hoda Realize How Quickly Everything Had Changed
On September 8, Hoda shared several photographs documenting the family’s walk to school.
Haley wore a pink striped dress and white sneakers, while Hope chose a pink floral dress with a denim jacket. In one image, Hoda and Joel stood with their daughters outside the family home. Another showed all four crossing the street together, photographed from behind. (E! Online)
For Hoda, it was another milestone in the quieter life she deliberately created after leaving Manhattan.
She moved with the girls to the suburbs in 2024, wanting them to experience a childhood with a yard, neighborhood streets and the ability to walk to school. That change eventually became intertwined with an even larger decision: stepping away from her daily position on Today in January 2025. (People.com)
The woman who had spent years waking before dawn to appear on television suddenly became one of the parents walking to school with coffee in hand.
And Haley noticed.
After Hoda left Today, she recalled sitting in her home office early one morning when Haley came downstairs and seemed almost surprised to find her there.
“You really are here,” Haley told her.
Hoda answered, “I really am here.”
It was an extraordinarily small exchange compared with the enormous career decision that made it possible.
Yet to Hoda, that was the point.
Before Haley, Hoda Had Quietly Believed Motherhood Might Never Happen
The recent pictures become much more emotional when placed beside Hoda’s life before motherhood.
For years, she believed having children might simply be one experience she would have to live without.
Hoda survived breast cancer in 2007, and the treatment affected her ability to conceive. As she moved through her forties and into her fifties, she watched other people’s families grow while privately carrying the feeling that her own chance had passed.
Then another famous mother unexpectedly changed the way she saw her future.
Sandra Bullock.
Hoda recently revealed that seeing Bullock become a mother through adoption later in life made her reconsider everything. She searched Bullock’s age and realized that motherhood might not be as inaccessible as she had assumed.
Eventually, she reached out to Bullock directly.
The conversation helped change the course of her life, Hoda said in 2026. (EW.com)
Soon, a possibility she had barely allowed herself to imagine became real.
In 2017, Haley Arrived
Hoda was 52 when she adopted Haley Joy in 2017.
She had kept the process remarkably private, which meant viewers watching Today had little idea that something enormous was happening behind the scenes.
Then Hoda called into the show and revealed that she had become a mother.
Her voice cracked as she introduced Haley to the world.
The name carried meaning too. Haley was born on Valentine’s Day, and Hoda chose “Joy” as her middle name. The arrival transformed a life that had previously revolved around broadcasting schedules and professional milestones.
The early photographs are almost startling beside the 2026 school pictures.
Haley is tiny.
Hoda holds her close.
The broadcaster who had interviewed presidents, movie stars and world-famous musicians suddenly seemed most fascinated by the little person sitting in her lap.
And motherhood did something unexpected.
It made Hoda want more of it.
Then Hoda Began Hoping for a Sister for Haley
Nine months after adopting Haley, Hoda and Joel began the process again.
This time, Hoda already knew what she wanted to call the child if another adoption became possible.
Hope.
Hope Catherine arrived in 2019.
Hoda later described the relationship between her daughters as remarkably close, saying it felt as though they shared the same blood despite being adopted separately.
The family Hoda once feared she might never have was suddenly four people.
And photographs began documenting another transformation.
Haley was no longer the baby.
She was the big sister.
The girls were little enough that Hoda could easily wrap an arm around both.
In pictures from those years, Hope often wore her distinctive glasses while Haley stood protectively nearby. Their dark hair and bright expressions made them immediately recognizable to followers who had watched Hoda become a mother on television.
Now compare those photographs with September 2026.
The difference is enormous.
The “They Look Like Hoda” Comments Have Followed the Family for Years
When photographs of adoptive families appear online, physical resemblance can become a surprisingly complicated subject.
Hoda has never hidden the fact that her daughters were adopted. Quite the opposite: adoption is central to the way she tells the story of becoming their mother.
Yet as the girls have grown, followers have occasionally commented that they somehow resemble Hoda.
The resemblance people perceive may have little to do with facial structure.
Families often acquire similarities that cameras capture surprisingly well: expressions, smiles, gestures, posture and the way people react to one another.
Hoda’s daughters have spent their entire lives watching her.
And Hoda has spent their entire lives watching them.
So when somebody says Haley or Hope “looks like Hoda,” perhaps what they are noticing isn’t genetics at all.
Maybe it is familiarity.
The Girls Are Growing Up in a Very Different Life From the One Hoda Originally Gave Them
Haley and Hope spent their earliest years in New York City.
Then, in 2024, Hoda decided she wanted something different.
She moved the family to Bronxville, in Westchester County, where the girls could have a suburban childhood closer to the one Hoda remembered.
The transition meant a new house and a new school.
It also gave Hoda a new vision of what she wanted her own life to look like.
She wanted her daughters to feel grass beneath their feet.
She wanted them riding bicycles.
She wanted them running through a house and having neighborhood friends.
Most importantly, she wanted to be there to see it.
That desire eventually collided with the realities of morning television.
Hoda’s workday began absurdly early. By the time most parents were preparing breakfast, she had already been working for hours.
Her daughters were getting older.
She was turning 60.
And she began thinking about how many ordinary mornings she was willing to miss.
Leaving Today Wasn’t Really About Leaving Television
When Hoda announced in September 2024 that she would leave Today, viewers were stunned.
She had spent 17 years with the program and had reached one of the most coveted jobs in American broadcasting.
But her explanation kept returning to Haley and Hope.
After leaving her daily position in January 2025, she discovered what she had been missing.
Breakfast.
Walking to school.
Being present for daytime performances.
Random conversations that happen precisely because a parent is physically there.
She later recalled being able to watch Haley sing “What a Wonderful World” at 9:15 in the morning.
Under her previous schedule, she would have missed it.
“I used to think life was the big things,” Hoda explained, “but it really is all the stuff that happens in between.”
That philosophy is visible in nearly every family photograph she shares now.
Haley and Hope Look Dramatically Older in the New Pictures
There is no mystery about why the September photographs caught people’s attention.
Children change incredibly quickly between early childhood and elementary school.
Haley is now nine.
Hope is seven.
Haley has entered fourth grade and Hope second. (Just Jared)
Put the latest school photograph beside a picture from 2019 or 2020 and it can feel as though somebody skipped several chapters.
Their hair is longer.
They are taller.
Their faces have lost some of the roundness of early childhood.
And Haley in particular is reaching the age when the physical difference between mother and daughter begins shrinking noticeably in photographs.
Calling them “barely recognizable” is obviously dramatic — they are still clearly the same children Hoda has occasionally shared with followers.
But they certainly aren’t the tiny girls longtime Today viewers remember.
Their Father Was There for the New Milestone Too
There is another person in the September photographs who makes them particularly meaningful.
Joel Schiffman.
Hoda and Joel began dating in 2013 and became engaged in 2019. They ultimately ended their engagement, with Hoda publicly confirming the split in January 2022.
But ending their romantic relationship did not end their family.
Hoda explained at the time that they had decided they were better as friends and parents than as an engaged couple. (Us)
Four years later, the new school photographs provide unusually simple evidence of what that arrangement looks like.
Joel showed up.
He stood beside Hoda and their daughters.
Then the four walked toward school together.
Hoda has also continued publicly acknowledging Joel’s relationship with the girls. On Father’s Day this year, she shared a photograph of him with Haley and Hope and called him the “best father.” (Just Jared)
Their engagement ended.
Their parenting partnership didn’t.
Looking Back at the First-Day-of-School Photos Makes the Change Even Clearer
Hoda has turned the beginning of school into something of a family tradition.
In 2023, 2024 and 2025, she shared photographs marking the girls’ new grades. PEOPLE recently gathered six of those school-day moments together, creating an accidental visual timeline of Haley and Hope growing up. (People.com)
One year they are tiny.
Then their backpacks seem enormous.
Then suddenly the backpacks fit.
The 2024 photographs are particularly significant because that was their first year at a new school after the family’s move from Manhattan.
By 2026, what once looked unfamiliar has become routine.
They know the neighborhood.
They know the walk.
They have their school.
And Hoda is there.
The Most Important Difference Isn’t How Tall They Are
The viral framing naturally focuses on appearances.
How tall Haley and Hope have become.
How different they look.
Whether they resemble Hoda.
But Hoda’s own comments suggest that she measures the transformation differently.
When she left Today, she did not talk primarily about wanting more vacations or glamorous experiences with her children.
She talked about the in-between moments.
A child running downstairs.
A morning snuggle.
Breakfast.
A school walk.
Those were the things she was afraid of losing.
And that may explain why the newest photograph feels so different from the earliest ones.
When Haley arrived in 2017, Hoda was a 52-year-old woman who had spent years believing motherhood might no longer be possible.
In those first pictures, she was holding a baby she had desperately hoped for.
Nine years later, she is standing beside a fourth grader.
Hope’s story has moved almost as quickly.
The baby Hoda welcomed in 2019 is now walking into second grade.
Sandra Bullock Recently Heard Hoda Explain What Her Example Had Meant
This week, Hoda’s story came full circle in an especially emotional way.
During a conversation involving Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, Hoda explained directly how seeing Bullock adopt later in life had affected her.
At the time, Hoda had believed her opportunity for motherhood had passed.
Then she saw Sandra.
The possibility reopened.
Hoda eventually adopted Haley and then Hope.
Sitting with Bullock years later, she became emotional as she explained the consequence of that example.
“She changed the course of my life,” Hoda said. (EW.com)
It is difficult to imagine a clearer illustration of what she meant than the newest school photographs.
The two children standing beside her exist in Hoda’s life because at some point she allowed herself to believe there might be another route to motherhood.
From Babies in Her Arms to Girls Walking Beside Her
There are almost ten years between the first photographs of Hoda with Haley and the images she shared this week.
That is enough time to transform everything.
The television host who once announced through tears that she had adopted a baby is now the mother of a fourth grader and a second grader.
The apartment life they knew in Manhattan has become suburban mornings in Bronxville.
Her engagement to Joel ended, but they continue raising their daughters together.
Her daily Today career ended, but that decision gave her the mornings she wanted with Haley and Hope.
And the two tiny children who once fit easily into Hoda’s arms are increasingly standing shoulder-to-shoulder beside her.
Fans may call them “so tall.”
They may say the girls are “barely recognizable.”
Some may even insist they somehow look like their mother.
But the newest photographs tell a simpler story.
Haley and Hope are growing up.
And Hoda, after spending so many years believing she might never become a mother at all, has rearranged her life so she can be there to watch it happen. (People.com)
For another look at a famous family, see Pamela Anderson Reveals Rare Wedding Photos With Tommy Lee – Decades Later, Their Sons Are Creating Love Stories of Their Own and read more about Hoda’s choices for her girls in Hoda Kotb Left Manhattan Behind to Give Her Two Daughters a Different Childhood – Inside the Surprisingly Warm $2.9 Million Home She Chose.
