Savannah Guthrie fought back tears as she returned to NBC’s Today show for the first time since her mother’s disappearance.
The veteran presenter did not mention Nancy Guthrie, 84, whom authorities believe was abducted from her home in Arizona two months ago, but was visibly emotional when fans welcomed her outside the studio.
“I’m really feeling the love,” Savannah Guthrie said, clutching the arm of Jenna Bush Hager, her fellow Today presenter.
Some supporters, who had turned out on a chilly New York morning, carried signs with Guthrie’s name on them. One was wearing a shirt stamped with the words “Welcome home Savannah”.
Guthrie was also welcomed back by colleagues including Al Roker, the NBC weather forecaster, who blew her a kiss and said: “It’s good to see you, my dear.” Craig Melvin, another of her co-presenters, said it was “good to have you back at home.”
Nancy’s disappearance on Feb 1 has drawn international attention. Thousands of federal and local officers, in addition to volunteers, scoured the nearby desert for her, helped by a helicopter, drones and dog teams.
Donald Trump, the US president, said the Guthrie family would have “any and all resources at our disposal”.
But Nancy remains missing two months later, despite the Guthries offering $1m (£780,000) for her safe return.
The FBI released surveillance footage of a man in a balaclava on Nancy’s porch in the Catalina Foothills near Tucson. in the Catalina Foothills near Tucson. Blood was discovered on her doorstep.
Guthrie said her celebrity status, as a presenter on Today since 2012, might be the reason her mother was taken, and that the possibility was “too much to bear”.
‘Deep disappointment with God’
In a video message for Easter Sunday, played at a church in New York, Guthrie described her “deep disappointment with God” following her mother’s likely abduction.
“I have questioned whether Jesus really ever experienced this particular wound that I feel,” she said. “This grievous and uniquely cruel injury of not knowing, of uncertainty and confusion and answers withheld.”
But Guthrie said she found comfort that God “has felt those feelings from a perspective of humanity”.
“Perhaps this is too dark a message to share on Easter morning, but I have long believed that we miss out on fully celebrating resurrection if we do not acknowledge the feelings of loss, pain and, yes, death,” she continued.
“It is the darkness that makes this morning’s light so magnificent, so blindingly beautiful.”
Interviewed in March by Hoda Kotb, her temporary replacement on Today, Guthrie said she wanted to return to the show but cast doubt on whether she would be able to.
“I can’t come back and try to be something that I’m not. But I can’t not come back because it’s my family,” she said.
“I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I’ll belong any more, but I would like to try.”