Savannah Guthrie Recalls Moment She Learned Mom Nancy Was Missing: ‘I Was in a Panic’

Savannah Guthrie is breaking down the moment she learned her mom, Nancy Guthrie, had disappeared.

The news anchor, 54, opened up about the harrowing day during an interview with Hoda Kotb that aired on the Thursday, March 26, episode of the Today show. She noted that her husband, Michael Feldman, had been away with friends, so she’d gone over to Today colleague Carson Daly’s house with her kids.

On the morning of February 1, Savannah’s sister, Annie, called to tell her that Nancy, 84, had gone missing.

“She said, ‘She’s gone,’” Savannah recalled. “She was in a panic. I was in a panic. I’m like, ‘Call 911.’ She’s like. ‘I did. We called them. They’re here.’”

Savannah and her siblings initially thought that Nancy had “some kind of medical episode in the night and that somehow the paramedics had come” because the back doors of the house were propped open.

“That didn’t make any sense,” she explained. “We thought maybe they came and there’s a stretcher and they took her out the back, but her phone was there and her purse was there and all her things. And it just didn’t make any sense.”

Annie and her husband, Tommaso Cioni, “had already called all the hospitals” to check whether Nancy was being treated in one, but Savannah decided to call too.

“It was just chaos and disbelief,” she recalled, noting that she and her siblings just hugged each other once they all reunited in Arizona. “From the very early moments, Annie and Tommy were saying [to authorities], ‘This isn’t a case that you are used to where someone wanders off. She can’t wander off.’”

Savannah went on to note that Nancy “was in tremendous pain” because of problems with her back, which meant she almost certainly couldn’t have left her home by herself.

“Her back was very bad,” she explained. “On a good day, she could walk down to the mailbox and get the mail, but most days not, so there was no ‘wander off.’ And the doors were propped open, and there was blood on the front doorstep. The Ring camera had been yanked off. And so we were saying, ‘This is not OK. This isn’t — something is very wrong here.’”

Savannah and her family reported Nancy missing on February 1. She was last seen the night prior after having dinner with Annie and her family.

Last month, Savannah and her family increased the reward for Nancy’s recovery to $1 million.

“Please keep praying without ceasing,” Savannah said in a video at the time. “We still believe. We still believe in a miracle. We still believe that she can come home, hope against hope. As my sister says, ‘We are blowing on the embers of hope.’”

Savannah reiterated on Thursday that she believes her mother is still alive, telling Kotb, “She is present tense to me.”