Savannah Guthrie walked back to the Today show anchor desk this morning, Monday April 6, 2026, for the first time in more than two months.
Her opening words were simple, “We are so glad you started your week with us, and it is good to be home.”
Co-anchor Craig Melvin patted her hand and replied, “Yes, it is good to have you at home.”
She then introduced the morning’s lead segment, coverage of the ongoing war with Iran, and said, “Here we go, ready or not. Let’s do the news.”
Her mother, Nancy Guthrie, 84, is still missing. The investigation into her disappearance is still open. Nobody has been charged.
Nobody has been arrested. Nancy has been gone for 65 days.
What Happened To Nancy Guthrie?
Nancy Ellen Guthrie was born January 27, 1942, in Fort Wright, Kentucky. She had lived in the Tucson, Arizona area for more than fifty years, moving there with her family in the early 1970s.
She was widowed in 1988 when her husband Charles died unexpectedly during a mining exploration trip in Mexico. She raised three children. Savannah, Annie, and Camron.
She was last seen on the evening of Saturday, January 31, 2026, when her son-in-law Tommaso Cioni, Annie’s husband, dropped her off at her home in Catalina Foothills, a suburb of Tucson, at approximately 9:50 p.m.
She did not appear for a scheduled church livestream the following morning. A church member contacted the family.
Relatives went to her home around 11 a.m., found no sign of her, and called 911 around noon on February 1.
What law enforcement found at the scene pointed immediately to something far worse than a missing persons case.
Bloodstains confirmed to be Nancy’s were found at the residence. The back doors of the home were found propped open.
Her phone and personal belongings were still inside. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos stated publicly that he believed she had been abducted and that the home was being treated as a crime scene.
What Have Investigations Found?
The FBI recovered doorbell camera footage from the morning of Nancy’s disappearance showing a masked suspect at her front door, described as a male approximately 5’9″ to 5’10” tall with an average build, wearing dark clothing, black gloves, sneakers, and a black 25-liter Ozark Trail Hiker Pack backpack.
The FBI released the footage publicly and described the individual as a suspect. Multiple ransom notes demanding payment in cryptocurrency were received by media outlets and law enforcement, with two deadlines that passed by February 9.
Authorities took the notes seriously and shared them with the FBI but neither confirmed nor denied whether they were sent by someone actually holding Nancy.
On February 10, a person of interest identified only as Carlos was detained following a traffic stop in Rio Rico, Arizona, approximately 60 miles south of Tucson, and released without charges.
A search warrant was executed on his property and vehicle. He was cleared. In early March, DNA recovered from a black glove found approximately two miles from the home was traced to a local restaurant worker who had no connection to the investigation.
The FBI doubled its reward to $100,000 for information leading to an arrest. The Guthrie family separately offered $1 million for information leading to Nancy’s safe recovery.
Savannah donated $500,000 to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, saying she hoped the attention given to her family would extend to others waiting for answers.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department cleared the entire Guthrie family, including all siblings and their spouses, as suspects.
A 20-to-24 person task force, roughly half from the sheriff’s office and half from the FBI, has been working the case continuously.
The FBI command post was moved from Tucson to Phoenix for operational efficiency while investigative teams remained on the ground in Tucson.
As of April 3, law enforcement stated that Nancy’s whereabouts and condition remain unknown.
What Did Savannah Say Before Returning?
In her first on-camera interview since her mother disappeared, conducted with Hoda Kotb and aired Friday on Today, Savannah spoke about why she was coming back.
She made a tearful plea for someone “to do the right thing” and share information. She confirmed that the back doors of her mother’s home had been found propped open, a detail not previously made public.
She addressed directly why she was returning to work while the investigation remained unresolved.
“I want to return because it’s my family,” she said. “I think it’s part of my purpose right now. I want to smile. And when I do, it will be real. And my joy will be my protest. My joy will be my answer. And being there is joyful.”
She had visited the Today studio on March 5, not on air, but in person, and was photographed outside the studio window in tears, embracing her colleagues.
“I really wanted to come and see everybody,” she told Kotb. “I just love this beautiful place that we call home, where we get to come and be every day. When times are hard, you want to be with your family.”
The Absences Before The Disappearance
The timeline of Savannah’s 2026 is worth understanding in full because the two absences, one planned, one catastrophic, ran back to back in a way that has defined her year.
In December 2025 she announced on air that she had vocal nodules and a polyp and would need surgery in early January. “Some of you have noticed that my voice has been very scratchy and started to crack a little bit like Peter Brady, who was going through a change,” she said.
Surgery was January 5. She recovered through the rest of the month and by late January said she was feeling better and had a new voice.
She had been scheduled to co-host NBC’s coverage of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics opening ceremony, an assignment she described as one she “couldn’t be more thrilled” about.
Instead, on February 3, NBC confirmed she would not be going to Italy. Mary Carillo stepped in alongside Terry Gannon to host the opening ceremony.
Hoda Kotb, who had left Today as a co-anchor in January 2025, returned to Studio 1A to fill in for Savannah starting February 6. Reports circulated in mid-February that Savannah was considering leaving the show entirely, citing concerns that her mother had been targeted because of her public profile and that she did not want to put her family at further risk.
NBC said publicly that she could return on her own timeline and that her Today family would welcome her back with open arms.
Who Is Savannah Guthrie?
Savannah Clark Guthrie was born December 27, 1971. She graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 2002 and scored first place on the Arizona Bar Exam. She is a licensed attorney in both Washington D.C. and Arizona.
She joined NBC News in September 2007 as a legal analyst and correspondent, served as White House correspondent from 2008 to 2011, and became Today’s main co-anchor in July 2012 after Ann Curry’s departure.
She has been at the anchor desk for fourteen years. She is married to Democratic communications consultant Michael Feldman, whom she married on March 15, 2014, in Tucson.
They have two children. A daughter, Vale, born August 2014, and a son, Charles, born 2016 via IVF, named after her father who died in 1988.
She returned to the anchor desk this morning in the city where she has worked for fourteen years and in the studio her colleagues call home.
Her mother has been missing for sixty-five days. She opened the show, introduced the news, and did her job.
If you have any information about Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, the Pima County Sheriff’s tip line is (520)-882-7463.
