Savannah Guthrie Admits Life Was 'Different' After Her Father Died

Apr 29, 2024

Aug. 8 2023, Published 2:53 p.m. ET

Savannah Guthrie revealed how the loss of her father affected her when she was only 16 years old.

While appearing on the Tuesday, August 8, episode of Brooke Shields' "Now What?" podcast, the Today anchor got vulnerable about the death of her dad, Charles, after he suffered a heart attack when she was just a teenager.

"I don't think we understood how serious that was," Guthrie explained of the tragedy. "And then three years later he had another heart attack, and that one was fatal. It was so unexpected."

The Georgetown University alum admitted that if her father had been alive while she was growing into adulthood, her life might have been different. "I think it changes everything. I always think of it as on our calendars we have B.C. and A.D. There's a before and after. It's just this stark dividing line," she told the former child actress.

"There's before my dad died, and there's after, and it's profound. Grief is a lifelong process. I really believe that. There's acute grief," she noted.

"There's different moments of grief, but I remember thinking even then when I was a late teenager, I always thought, 'I have a cup of grief now.' It's like a cup of water, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life emptying this cup," the journalist said. "And sometimes it's coming out in buckets. And sometimes it's a little sprinkle, and sometimes I can just hold it, and nothing comes out. But every last drop of this cup will not be empty until I leave this world. I will always carry this grief. It doesn't mean that I'm not happy, that I'm not joyous, but it's part of me."

Never miss a story — sign up for the OK! newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what OK! has to offer. It’s gossip too good to wait for!

After Guthrie welcomed children of her own — daughter Vale, 8, and son Charles, 6, with husband Michael Feldman — she really felt the pain of her loss.

"When you lose a parent like that, so suddenly, it's so shocking at 16, you just have some knowledge," she revealed. "You just know something about the world that hopefully others don't have to know."