The Moment
Savannah Guthrie is pulling back the curtain on a chapter most people in her position would file under “never speak of this again.”
On the debut episode of Hoda Kotb’s new YouTube series, Joy Rides, the former Today co-anchor opened up about her 2009 divorce from ex-husband Mark Orchard, a former BBC journalist, and admitted she felt “like a failure” as it all fell apart.
“I was in my 30s. I felt old,” she told Hoda, adding that at the same time her marriage was ending, she was starting a brand-new job at NBC and trying to keep her professional dreams afloat while her personal life was underwater.
“It made me have to really dig deep, and I felt like a failure,” she said, before explaining that her turning point came when she leaned hard into her faith. Guthrie said she realized she didn’t have to be perfect to be loved by God, and that feeling “loved and carried” helped her through the worst of it.
She’s talked about the split only sparingly before. In a July 2025 episode of Monica Lewinsky’s Reclaiming podcast, Guthrie called the divorce “horrible and sad” and said it “broke my heart” and took years to recover from.
Cut to now: Guthrie is remarried to former political adviser Michael Feldman, her husband since 2014, with two kids and a decade-long marriage under her belt. But she clearly hasn’t forgotten how hard the in-between was.
The Take
I’ll say it: it is oddly refreshing when a polished morning-show star admits she once felt like a total disaster.
We’re used to the PR-approved arc: “It was hard, but I’m so grateful, and now we co-parent beautifully and everything is a blessing.” Savannah’s version is closer to what divorce actually feels like for a lot of people in their 30s and 40s, especially women who thought they were right on schedule.
She was newly hired at NBC, mid-30s, first big network job, and her marriage flamed out after four years. That’s not just heartbreak; that’s identity whiplash. You can almost hear the soundtrack: everyone else’s life is moving “on time” while you’re digging yourself out of the rubble, wondering if you missed the memo on how to be an adult.
What strikes me is how much of her language is about failure and imperfection. In TV-land, especially morning TV with its bright lights and brighter smiles, the unspoken job description is: be perfect, look perfect, sell perfect. Admitting, on camera, “I was definitely a failure” is not on the cue cards.
Her story is basically this: the first marriage crashed, the career somehow took off, and faith became the bridge between the two. You do not have to share her religious beliefs to recognize the pattern. A lot of people our age make peace with old heartbreaks by reframing the story-from “I messed up my life” to “I’m still worthy, even if it got messy.”
If celebrity divorce narratives are usually a glossy HGTV renovation-“we tore it down and look how gorgeous the new kitchen is!”-Savannah is walking us through the demo phase. The dust, the regret, and then, slowly, the gut-level sense that you’re still loved anyway.
Is it revolutionary? No. Is it real? It sure sounds like it.
Receipts
Confirmed:
- Guthrie discussed her 2009 divorce from Mark Orchard and said she felt “like a failure” while starting a new job at NBC, in the debut episode of Hoda Kotb’s YouTube series Joy Rides (January 2026 episode, as summarized in an entertainment report published January 23, 2026).
- She said her breakthrough came when she leaned on her Christian faith and realized she didn’t have to be “perfect to be loved by God,” and that she felt “loved and carried” during that period, according to the same interview recap.
- Guthrie previously described the divorce as “horrible and sad” that “broke my heart” and took years to recover, in a July 2025 episode of Monica Lewinsky’s Reclaiming podcast, as quoted in later coverage.
- Savannah Guthrie and Mark Orchard were married from 2005 to 2009 and have no children together; she married Michael Feldman in 2014, and they share two kids, Vale and Charley, as noted in public biographical profiles and the January 2026 report.
Unverified / Contextual:
- Any specific timeline for “years to recover” beyond Guthrie’s own broad description has not been detailed in public records.
- How Orchard personally experienced the marriage and divorce has not been publicly laid out in detail; most accounts center Guthrie’s perspective.
Sources: January 23, 2026 entertainment report on Savannah Guthrie’s Joy Rides appearance; January 2026 episode of Hoda Kotb’s YouTube series Joy Rides; July 2025 episode of Monica Lewinsky’s Reclaiming podcast featuring Savannah Guthrie; publicly available biographical information on Guthrie’s marriages and children.
Backstory (For Casual Readers)
If you mainly know Savannah Guthrie as the calm, capable “Today” show presence who can flip from royal coverage to cooking segments without breaking a sweat, here’s the quick rewind.
Guthrie, a lawyer-turned-journalist, married Mark Orchard in 2005 after meeting him while covering the Michael Jackson trial. They divorced in 2009. Around that same time, she was rising fast at NBC, eventually becoming a key anchor on Today. In 2014, she married Michael Feldman, a former political adviser. They now have two children and recently marked their 10-year wedding anniversary in May 2024-basically a lifetime in TV years.
Publicly, she’s generally kept the first marriage in the “closed file” drawer, dropping only occasional, carefully worded mentions. This new conversation with Hoda goes a layer deeper, especially around the emotional fallout and the role her faith played in stitching her back together.
What’s Next
Guthrie already telegraphed that she’s leaning into more reflective territory with her book, Mostly What God Does: Reflections on Seeking and Finding His Love Everywhere. This latest conversation with Hoda feels like part of that same chapter-less news-anchor Savannah, more midlife-memoir Savannah.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we see her continue down this lane: more long-form interviews, more spiritual and emotional honesty, maybe even another book that deals more directly with divorce, reinvention, and later-in-life motherhood. For a generation of viewers who watched her grow up on morning TV while they were surviving their own divorces and reinventions, that could land pretty deeply.
On a practical level, keep an eye on future stops where she’s the one in the hot seat instead of behind the desk: podcast chats, more sit-downs with friends like Hoda, and any follow-up projects that build on the themes from her faith-focused writing.
And if there’s a bigger takeaway here, it’s this: even the people who seem to “have it all” on camera often spent years feeling like they’d blown it. The story just keeps going anyway.
Your turn: When celebrities open up about divorce and feeling like a “failure,” does it make you feel seen-or do you prefer they keep that part of life private?
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