Savannah Guthrie returned to her co-anchor position on the Today show on Monday, over two months after her mother, Nancy Guthrie, went missing.
Guthrie, who has been a co-anchor of the weekday morning show since 2012, returned to the desk at Rockefeller Center's Studio 1A wearing a smile and a yellow dress — the same color as the flowers and ribbons that people have been leaving outside her mom's Arizona residence in tribute.
After teasing the news stories of the day — Iran, the Artemis II lunar flyby, March Madness and more — Guthrie briefly acknowledged her homecoming.
"We are so glad you started your week with us, and it is good to be home," she said, prompting a warm welcome from co-host Craig Melvin, who was wearing a yellow tie.
"Well, here we go," Guthrie said. "Ready or not, let's do the news."
Fans welcomed Guthrie back, too, with many standing outside the building waving signs of support behind the window. When that was pointed out to her between segments, she said was "Really feeling the love so much."
Her decision to resume her duties at the popular NBC daytime show comes after months of investigation into the disappearance of her 84-year-old mother, who was last seen on the night of Jan. 31.
In an interview last month with fellow NBC colleague Hoda Kotb, Savannah Guthrie said that she was inspired in large part by her mother to return to work despite her grief.
"I won't let sadness win. For her," Guthrie said.
Nancy's husband and Savannah's father, Charles Guthrie, died at just 49 years old, leaving Nancy to find work to support herself and her family as a single mother of three children.
"I saw her grieve, I saw her world shatter. I saw it, and I saw her get up," she said.
Still, Guthrie also acknowledged that she wasn't sure how she would manage being in the studio again as questions still linger about her mother's whereabouts. But she pointed to the support she had received from her NBC colleagues to help her get through.
"It's hard to imagine doing it because it's such a place of joy and lightness, and I can't come back and try to be something that I'm not," Guthrie said.
"But I can't not come back, because it's my family."
Guthrie had been set to host the Winter Olympics in Milan. But on Feb. 1, the news came in that her mother had been abducted.
In the weeks since, investigators have tried to figure out what happened after Nancy Guthrie returned home from a family dinner on Jan. 31.
Guthrie told Kotb that when she got the news, she rushed from New York, where she resides, to her mother's home north of Tucson, Ariz. It was immediately clear that something was "very wrong," she said.
"There was blood on the front doorstep, and the Ring camera had been yanked off and so we were saying this is not okay," she said.
Surveillance footage released by police showed an armed man wearing a mask and gloves approach and tamper with Nancy Guthrie's doorbell camera in the early morning hours of Feb. 1.
The Guthrie family has publicly responded to ransom notes with video messages, offering to pay for their mother's return home, but have not received a response.
Guthrie has repeatedly asked that anyone with information about her mother's disappearance come forward.
Speaking to Kotb, she said: "We need an answer, and someone has it in their power to help. It is never too late and when you do, the warmth of love and forgiveness that will come will be greater than can be imagined."
The search has continued since February, with no major breakthroughs. Guthrie's family is offering a $1 million reward for any information leading to Nancy Guthrie's return.
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