Savannah Guthrie was showered with fans’ cheers and heralded by colleagues as “our North Star” on Monday as she returned to her “Today” co-hosting duties for the first time since her mother’s Feb. 1 disappearance.
She wore yellow, matching the supportive ribbons and banners placed near the Tucson home of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie in Arizona, and co-host Craig Melvin wore a yellow tie.
“Welcome to ‘Today’ on Monday morning. We are so glad you started your week with us,” said a beaming Guthrie. “And it is good to be home.”
She turned to Melvin as he said, “Yes. And it is good to have you back at home.”
“Well here we are, ready or not, let’s do the news,” Guthrie said as Melvin patted her arm affectionately and said again, “Yes, so good to have you back.”
Cheering fans, many also wearing yellow, assembled on the sidewalk outside the studio waving placards welcoming her back. They were joined before the last half hour of the show by the co-hosts themselves.
“We are back, on this beautiful Monday morning,” Melvin announced. “And it’s a special Monday morning for us and for this crowd as well. Because we’re welcoming back our North Star.”
The crowd went wild, some visibly teary-eyed, as Guthrie joined her colleagues outside.
“These signs are so beautiful. You guys have been so beautiful,” a tearful Guthrie said. “I have received so many letters, so much kindness to me and my whole family, we feel it. And we feel your prayers. So thank you so much.”
“It’s not just today,” meteorologist Al Roker told her, patting her arm. “They’ve been out here every day.”
The search continues for Nancy Guthrie, who went missing from her home overnight after spending the evening with her daughter, Annie, and family on Jan. 31. The family called 911 the next day after she did not show up to watch a live-streamed church service at a friend’s home.
Samantha Guthrie also delivered an Easter message on Sunday in which she candidly discussed her faith amid the search for her mother.
“I have long believed that we miss out on fully celebrating resurrection if we do not acknowledge the feelings of loss, pain and, yes, death,” she said in a digital address to fellow parishioners in the Good Shepherd New York church where she worships. “It is the darkness that makes this morning’s light so magnificent, so blindingly beautiful. It is all the brighter because it is so desperately needed.”
With News Wire Services
