“It has been more amazing than I could have ever imagined,” Sheinelle Jones tells PEOPLE of co-hosting ‘Today with Jenna & Sheinelle’

NEED TO KNOW

• Sheinelle Jones is recalling what Hoda Kotb shared with her before she boarded Today with Jenna & Sheinelle
• The Today co-host spoke with PEOPLE at the EBONY Power 100 red carpet on Monday, Nov. 9
• “It has been more amazing than I could have ever imagined,” Jones says

Sheinelle Jones still remembers what Hoda Kotb told her before boarding Today’s fourth hour.

The Today with Jenna & Sheinelle co-host, 48, caught up with PEOPLE at the 2026 EBONY Power 100 Gala red carpet on Monday, Nov. 9, when she reflected on a conversation she had with Kotb, 62, before joining the show as co-host earlier this year.

“It’s crazy. I started in January, so we’re almost at a year. I remember when I started, Hoda called me and she was like, ‘Listen,’” Jones, who has been part of the Today family since 2014, says. “She was like, ‘It’s going to be more fun than you can ever imagine.’”

Reflecting on Kotb’s prediction, Jones recalls her friend telling her, “One day you’re going to be giving a graduation speech, and you’re going to talk about how sitting in that chair changed your career and how you had so much fun.”

“And already, almost a year in, she’s right,” Jones says. “It has been more amazing than I could have ever imagined.”

Kotb departed the morning show in January 2025 after being a fixture in the fourth hour since 2007. After Jenna Bush Hager briefly led Today with Jenna & Friends in the months to follow, Jones began co-hosting alongside her on the renamed Today with Jenna & Sheinelle in January.

Jones has since been named a “media maven” on this year’s Ebony Power 100 list, and she tells PEOPLE why the recognition felt “full circle.”

“One of my first assignments, I remember I got assigned a biography, a book report, or to write about somebody that we admire. Some kids [picked] Martin Luther King or JFK or Lincoln; I did John Johnson who founded Ebony magazine,” Jones says. “I talked about how it was November of 1945, and I cut out his picture with my little glue stick. So all these years later to be honored by Ebony is surreal.”

She adds, “I called my mom. I’m like, ‘You remember when I did that report on John Johnson? He founded Ebony and Jet.’ And she was like, ‘Yes.’”

While Jones was in Los Angeles for her latest recognition, Kotb returned to Today earlier this week with Bush Hager. During Today with Jenna & Sheinelle, Kotb admitted that they “spiffed the place up” since she left.

Today airs daily on NBC, beginning at 7 a.m. ET.

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