“You actually need a man to have dates with at 4:30 in the morning — that’s your prime time,” Bush Hager said to Kotb
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Everyone needs a man like Ted Danson in their lives!
On the Dec. 6 episode of the Today show, Jenna Bush Hager and Hoda Kotb discussed Danson’s recent interview with PEOPLE where he said he and his wife have 4:30 a.m. dates. Bush Hager then joked that a guy like The Good Place alum, 76, would be perfect for Kotb, 60.
“You actually need a man to have dates with at 4:30 in the morning — that’s your prime time,” Bush Hager, 43, said to her co-host. “That’s who you need.”
“That’s exactly who I need,” Kotb agreed. “My primetime is the morning.”
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Bush Hager also told Kotb, who is leaving her position on the morning talk show in January, that she hopes she uses her time away from the job to get extra sleep.
“My wish for you in 2025 is that you sleep past 4:30,” she said. “You are going to have space for your brain to grow.”
Kotb, however, wasn’t too sure. “It’s just like any habit that’s hard to break,” she noted.
“I’m going to work on it,” she continued. “But my plan is — I usually wake up at 3 or 3:15, that’s my wakeup — I’m going to move it to 5. You know what that is? That’s two hours! But I’ve always been a believer, even before I did the morning show, that the morning is my time. I like to get things done while the world’s asleep.”
“Even if it’s not getting things done, it’s reading poetry and having a cup of coffee in a quiet house,” Bush Hager chimed in.
“Yes! To me to know that even before the day begins, I like to know that I did my meditation, I had my coffee, I wrote my thank you notes, I went to the gym,” Kotb added, to which Bush Hager insisted: “Totally, but no more 3:30.”
In November, Danson opened up to PEOPLE about what a typical date looks like for him and his wife of 29 years Mary Steenburgen, saying he prefers “early bird specials” over a date night.
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“The most fun is the early mornings. 4:30 in the morning, coffee in bed, playing Wordle, Connections and Spelling Bee, talking and laughing and sharing,” he said, referencing the online games created by The New York Times. “To both of us, it’s like heaven on Earth.”
Even when they are apart, Danson said the couple rarely misses their special morning routine.
“Even if she’s working in a different time zone, we will wake up in time to be able to play our games and have coffee over the phone,” he said.
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Today airs weekday mornings on NBC (check local listings).
