Jenna Bush Hager Breaks Down in Tears as Savannah Guthrie Joins Her Hour of 'Today' Amid Desperate Search for Missing Mom Nancy

Jenna Bush Hager got emotional beside surprise guest co-host Savannah Guthrie on the fourth hour of Today.

During the Monday, June 8, episode of TODAY With Jenna & Sheinelle, the anchors celebrated National Best Friends Day by acknowledging how they have leaned on each other amid tragedy.

Guthrie opened up about returning to work after her mom, Nancy, was abducted from her home in February.

“You’re here, and it’s National Best Friends Day, so we’re celebrating the right way. I’ve just marveled, as somebody who knows you and loves you, at your strength,” Jenna said, choked up. “You coming back here and leading the ship, which I know has not been easy, yet here you are, morning after morning, getting out of bed, spending the mornings with us. And I know so many of you at home feel the same way about you.”

Savannah acknowledged that she struggles to look at her “best friend” every morning without crying.

“It’s really hard to come back. I’ve been trying so hard to hold it together, and I promise I will, especially since it’s about joy,” she said. “But having you, everyone behind the scenes, people in my ear, the producers, our castmates. When I see you in the morning, I know you see me, no matter what is going on. Sometimes, it’s almost too much, because I feel like to do the job, I need to keep it together, pull it together.”

Savannah returned to her regular spot on the third hour of Today on April 6.

“I’m happy to be back. It’s the two hours of my day…it’s not that I’m not thinking about it, because I am, but it’s something to do,” she explained on the June 8 broadcast. “It brings me a lot of joy to be with everybody. But no, it’s not easy.”

“I know it’s not easy,” Jenna acknowledged. “But it speaks to the fact that…I remember even when I started here, and I’m sure you’ve heard him, my dad [George W. Bush] sort of made fun of the way we call each other family. He’s like, ‘How’s the family?’ But we really do work in a place where people surround you with love. You’re loved. So there must be some tiny bit of…relief isn’t even the word. I don’t know what it is, but a spark of something.”

Savannah agreed that she considers Jenna her “family” and finds “respite” in spending time with her Today colleagues.

“I don’t think if I had any other kind of job, I would’ve even tried to come back,” she admitted. “I just felt like, ‘What else should I do?’ And my mom would’ve said the same, like, ‘Honey, just keep going.’ So I am.”

The media personality revealed she was “afraid” to be on TODAY With Jenna & Sheinelle because she finds it “hard” to “not be real” in Jenna’s company.

“I couldn’t look at you in this kind of setting where we just talk about life and not tell the truth about my life,” Savannah said, while Jenna insisted she will always “have her back.”

The 54-year-old added, “I cry every morning on the way to work, and I cry every morning on the way home. I’m grateful to have good friends and to be able to come to such a beautiful and joyous and supportive place.”

Nancy was abducted from her home in Tucson, Ariz., in the early morning hours of February 1 and was confirmed to be missing later that day. A surveillance video from her doorbell camera showed a masked and armed man tinkering with the lens, but no suspects have been publicly identified.