What you need to know
Savannah Guthrie gets emotional as she talks about her journey through voice surgery.
The Today co-anchor, 54, revealed in a segment aired on Friday, January 23, that she underwent voice surgery because her voice became “squeaky” and she found it difficult to “understand sentences” while working as a host.
She went to see a voice specialist, Dr. Peek Wu, who said he found a “bleeding polyp”, or ruptured blood vessel, on one side of her vocal cords, and a “vocal cord nodule” from overuse on the other side. Wu suggested microlaryngeal surgery, a delicate surgery performed under general anesthesia to remove the growth.
“We carefully remove the polyp using an instrument the size of an ant’s head, but preserve the surrounding tissue so it can vibrate,” he told Today.
Ms Guthrie underwent surgery and then faced what she described as the “toughest task” of her life: “keeping quiet” until she recovered. However, after the surgery, she made sure to share her feelings by writing on a piece of paper, “I am happy.”
After a week of forced vocal rest, she was at Dr. Wu’s office to try out her newly restored vocal cords for the first time. He put a “numbing spray” on her and inserted a small camera into her nose to see how her vocal cords were healing, she said. He then encouraged her to speak for the first time and to “say what you say every morning.”
“Good morning. Today is Tuesday, January 13, 2026. I used my voice for the first time and it sounded so good I almost cried,” Guthrie said, before breaking down in tears in a hug with her doctor.
“Once again, I was speechless.[I was]so grateful,” she added in a voiceover.
Dr. Wu noted that restoring a person’s voice can be an “emotional” process, saying, “The voice is actually an expression of the soul, and when you suddenly restore it and find out that it’s possible, it can be emotional.”
But that wasn’t the end, she said, and she also had to get her voice “back to normal” with voice therapy. She said voice therapy helps her not only preserve her voice, but also strengthen it.
Guthrie announced on December 19th that he would be taking a leave of absence from Today. She is scheduled to return on Monday, January 26th.
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“It was tough at first. I had to get the hang of silence and solitude and just being myself. It can actually be scary in a way, but I found it to be a beautiful moment, a spiritual moment,” she shared.
When asked if his voice was back (100%) yet, he answered “yes”, but said he would be “more careful” with his voice from now on. She said that she plans to rest her voice after today’s broadcast. She also said she continues to do speech therapy every day.
As for her husband, Michael Feldman, and their two children, Vale and Max, she said she was happy to be able to talk again. “They’re like, ‘Wow, we can talk again.’” They’re happy with that. ”
