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Hoda Kotb on When She Realized She Had to Become a Mom: 'Everyday Moment Turned Into an Epiphany'

Hoda Kotb
Hoda Kotb

Hoda Kotb/Instagram

Hoda Kotb is looking back on the tearful moment when she first shared she wanted to be a mother.

The Today co-host, 57, appears on the first-ever episode of PEOPLE's new podcast Me Becoming Mom where she opens up about her journey to parenthood and shares the emotional story of when she realized she wanted children.

"I was actually with a girlfriend and we were walking down a street and I remember it like it was yesterday," she recalls. "...Because I had never shared it with anyone that I had wanted — I still yearned for [having children] because it seemed like wanting to go to the moon, it's not happening, so don't even bring it up."

"So she said, 'Well, neither of us really wanted to have children.' I looked at her and I said, 'Well, I do.' I didn't say did, I said I do. She looked at me and she goes, 'What?' I started crying. I said, 'I do. I do.' I said it out loud, 'I do,' " Kotb tells host Zoë Ruderman, Head of Digital at PEOPLE.

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RELATED: Hoda Kotb Worried If Fiancé Hadn't Been Open to Adoption It Would Have Been 'End of a Relationship'

"It was so weird. It was an everyday moment that turned into an epiphany and I had never spoken it," she adds.

Kotb, who later welcomed daughters Hope Catherine, 2, and Haley Joy, 4, via adoption with fiancé Joel Schiffman, says it wasn't until that moment when she "said it out loud" that she realized she had to become a mother.

"I was like, 'Oh my God, I do want to have children, right now. Here in my current state,' " she shares.

Hoda Kotb Instagram
Hoda Kotb Instagram

Hoda Kotb Instagram Hoda Kotb and family

The 12-episode weekly Me Becoming Mom podcast explores the various roads to motherhood through different interviews with both celebrity guests and experts in the field. Topics on the show include IVF, adoption, surrogacy, single parenthood, same-sex couples, home births, pregnancy loss, unexpected and surprising birth stories, among other subjects.

Upcoming guests on the show include Alyssa Milano, Padma Lakshmi, Tamron Hall and more.

New episodes of Me Becoming Mom drop weekly on Thursdays wherever you stream podcasts.