Savannah Guthrie Reveals She Has to Undergo Vocal Surgery, Will Be Off the Today Show for Several Weeks

Savannah Guthrie announced on Dec. 19 that she’ll be taking some time away from the Today show to undergo vocal surgery in the new year.

Guthrie, 53, explained on air that she has nodules on her vocal chords and a polyp that require removal. After the procedure, she’ll need to be on vocal rest while she recovers.

“Some of you have noticed that my voice has been very scratchy and started to crack a little bit,” Guthrie shared. “Well, I have found out what it is. I have vocal nodules and I also have a polyp. It’s not a big, big deal, but I am going to have to have a surgery in the new year and be off for a couple of weeks, so this is my last day for a little while.”

Guthrie joked that some viewers might think she had “the world’s longest head cold,” but instead she’s “really excited” to have finally diagnosed the problem and found a fix.

“This has been going on for years, honestly, so to have a solution,” Guthrie shared.

One downside to the surgery is that Guthrie has to be “totally silent” for a couple of weeks, which she joked meant, “Christmas coming early for my family.”

Her co-host Sheinelle Jones shared that she went through the same surgery and noted some of the perks.

“The silver lining is you have permission to be still,” Jones shared. “The house gets quiet, the kids are gonna want to help you out.”

She then gave Guthrie the whiteboard she used to “speak” during the recovery period.

“A lot of the greats have done it, maybe you’ll come out singing like, I don’t know, Celine Dion,” Jones quipped to Guthrie.

“Well, you know, it’s really funny, I used to sing,” Guthrie said. “Then I couldn’t sing anymore and then I couldn’t speak anymore. So who knows, guys the tour is happening in 2026.”

Guthrie has been at the helm of the NBC morning broadcast since 2012. She shares her two children, daughter Vale, 11, and son Charley, 9, with her husband Mike Feldman.

In 2019, Guthrie had to undergo eye surgery to re-attach her right retina after her son, then 3, accidentally hit her with a sharp toy train.

Guthrie was initially hopeful that doctors would be able to fix the tear with less-invasive laser surgery. When that didn’t work, she opened up to PEOPLE about the terrifying moment when her vision went from blurry to dark the night before the main procedure.

“The retinal tear had deteriorated sharply, and I lost my vision,” she said at the time. “And that’s what happens if you don’t fix this: You lose your sight.”

“That was the first time I felt freaked out,” she continued. “I was hoping that they weren’t going to get in there and see, ‘Oh, it’s worse than we thought. We can’t fix it.’ That was probably the lowest I felt, because I was just really scared.”

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And, while surgery proved successful, the recovery forced Guthrie to stay facedown for extended periods of time post-operation.

“It’s uniquely challenging, this recovery,” she told PEOPLE at the time. “Your body starts hurting in different places, lying down like that.”