Savannah Guthrie Is Having Surgery to Treat Her Vocal Cords

Savannah Guthrie said Dec. 19 on TODAY that she will undergo surgery on her vocal cords.

“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,” Savannah said, referring to a “Brady Bunch” clip the show played featuring that character’s voice cracking while he sang.

“Well, I have found out what it is. I have vocal nodules, and now I also have a polyp. It’s not a big, big deal, but I am going to have a surgery real early in the new year and be off for a couple of weeks. So it’s my last day for a little while. So I just want to let everyone know, and if you’ve been wondering, do I have the world’s longest head cold? No, I don’t.”

She told Craig Melvin, Al Roker and Sheinelle Jones that the surgery will require her to stop speaking.

“You’ll love this, guys. I have to be silent for a couple of weeks, totally silent,” she said. “Christmas coming early for my family.”

Sheinelle then chimed in to say she too had surgery on one of her vocal cords.

“The silver lining is you have permission to be still,” she said. “The house gets quiet. The kids are going to want to help you out.”

Sheinelle then took out a dry erase board that she used, prompting Savannah to joke she would use it to parent her children, Vale, 11, and Charley, 9.

“I know. I’ll be like, ‘No, you cannot eat candy in your bedroom,’” she said.

“It’ll be great. You’ll be fine,” Sheinelle reassured her.

“Prayers for healing and recovery,” added Craig.

Savannah then said she’s looking forward to receiving treatment on her vocals.

“I’m really excited about it. This has been going on for years, honestly,” she said. Sheinelle added that Savannah could even emerge from the surgery singing like Celine Dion.

“It’s really funny. I used to be able to sing, and then I couldn’t sing anymore, and then I couldn’t speak anymore, so who knows?” Savannah said.

Savannah has kept viewers in the loop about her health, especially in connection to an eye injury she suffered in 2019 when she tore her retina and lost her vision. She then had surgery to repair the retina.

In 2020, she underwent cataract surgery and called the procedure a success.

In 2021, she revealed she underwent another operation on her eye.

“One last teeny tiny eye surgery and I’m back in business!!!” she wrote on Instagram, sharing a photo of herself with a cover over her left eye.