NBC's Hoda Kotb Returns to Northern Virginia, Talks Success, Survival

NBC "Today" host and Northern Virginia native Hoda Kotb whooped it up with a crowd of about 300 mostly women Friday night with inspiring stories of her ups and downs in her broadcast career and surviving breast cancer.

"I feel so at home here, I went to [class of '82] which is now , and graduated from Virginia Tech," Kotb told the crowd at the event at the McLean Hilton. 

Fort Hunt resident Suzanne Davis, whose son Collin is a sophomore at West Potomac, was one of several hundred Northern Virginia business women in the audience who settled in to hear Kotb after a wine and cheese reception, roast chicken dinner and chocolate mousse dessert.

"My mom [Sami Kotb of Alexandria] is from Egypt and my mom believes I can do anything, alright?" Kotb said, launching into a story of finding her first broadcasting job. "I like to say that behind every strong woman is a stronger woman."

"So when I graduated from Tech, this was my big game plan. I had one job interview, just one, in Richmond. I got my green suit, I got my hair all blown out and I drove my mom's car from Alexandria," she said. 

After the director of the Richmond TV station told her she wasn't ready for Richmond, she then traveled to Roanoke, where she was told the same thing, to come back in a few years. "They told me 'You're not ready for Roanoke. I thought 'Who in the hell isn't ready for Roanoke?' 

After driving, interviewing and getting rejected at stations all across the Southeast for 10 days, Kotb said she was ready to return to Virginia while she was lost driving across Mississippi. "You know how they say God gives you a sign?" She saw a sign along the road with the CBS eye logo and decided to give it one more try and headed for the CBS station in Greenville.

"It only takes one person to change your life," Kotb said, referring to news director Stan Sandroni at WXVT in Greenville, Miss., who decided to hire her.

Since that first job, where she began her anchoring debut by saying "Good Morning" (while substituting for a sick colleague) on an evening newscast, Kotb went on to work at several other TV stations including WWL-TV in New Orleans before landing the big kahuna of broadcasting: a network position at NBC in New York City. She began working as a correspondent for "Dateline" in 1998 and then added the "Today" show to her plate.

When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, a stranger on a plane convinced Kotb that she should open up about the experience and not "hog her journey." She decided to discuss it live on the "Today" show and was overwhelmed with the response she got from viewers.

Surviving cancer made her learn four new words, she said: "You. Can't. Scare. Me." She decided to ask for the job of hosting the fourth hour of the "Today" show. "What are you afraid of?" she asked the audience. She now hosts 'Today''s popular "fun" fourth-hour program with co-host Kathie Lee Gifford.

Kotb told the crowd that the way you spend your days is the way you spend your life. "If you're dissatisfied with your life, change Monday, then Tuesday, then a week. People feel like they need to do something big like open an orphanage in Africa. But it's the little things."

After her speech, Hotb took questions from the audience, on:

Kathie Lee Gifford, her co-host on the "Today" show: "She is one of the most fiercely loyal people I have ever met in my life. She tells it like it is." 

Her boyfriend: She said she's about to celebrate her one-year anniversary with him next weekend; she met him after his daughters set them up at a book-signing at Barnes & Nobles.

What she would do different: Don't let others define you or put you in a box. Don't sit quietly and wait for your career to change.

What inspires her: Listening to graduation speeches on YouTube (she suggested watching Tom Brokaw or Tom Hanks)

The most interesting person she has ever met: Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest in Burma. (Kotb, reporting for "Dateline," had to sneak into her compound to interview her, escape detection by the military and hide the interview in her shoes.) Kyi was released from house arrest last year after seven years. "I was so in awe of her and it reminded me again, it just takes one."

Sponsors of the evening included Volkswagen Group of America, Washington Gas and Reston Hospital Center. Kotb is the author of the best-selling book "Hoda: How I Survived War Zones, Bad Hair, Cancer, and Kathie Lee."