Savannah Guthrie is asking for prayers for her mother, Nancy Guthrie, after Arizona authorities said they believe the 84-year-old was taken against her will over the weekend from her home in Tucson, where she lives alone, the Associated Press reported. Guthrie, who was not at the anchor’s desk Tuesday, made the request as law enforcement urged the public to offer tips in an investigation that has so far produced little new information.
Investigators said they were looking for leads, but they declined to talk about any evidence they found at the home and they did not narrow down the timeline of when they believe Nancy Guthrie was abducted, according to the report. A person familiar with the case told the AP that investigators do not believe the abduction was part of a robbery or a kidnapping-for-ransom plot, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss details publicly.
For “Today” viewers, Nancy Guthrie had been a familiar presence through occasional appearances on NBC’s flagship morning show, the AP said. Her disappearance has shaken the program, where she previously appeared in segments including a cooking demonstration and showed up at times to surprise her daughter after Savannah Guthrie became an anchor in 2012.
During Tuesday’s broadcast, Jenna Bush Hager said on air that it was “personal” to the hosts and to viewers who had gotten to know Nancy Guthrie and loved her, the report said. Hager made the remarks after Savannah Guthrie asked for prayers, according to the AP account.
Savannah Guthrie has described her mother in past interviews and on television as a person of faith and as a steady source of strength for the family. Four years before the latest disappearance report, Guthrie said on “Today” that her mother had “lived a life of integrity and loyalty,” and she also called her “a truth teller,” the AP reported, quoting Guthrie from an earlier tribute.
In another earlier description of her mother, Guthrie said in 2022 that Nancy Guthrie had met “unthinkable challenges in her life with grit, without self-pity, with determination and always, always with unshakeable faith,” the report said. Guthrie credited her father’s death with bringing the family closer after 1988 and has said both her and her siblings decided to stay at home during college so their mother would not be alone on weekends, according to the AP.
Nancy Guthrie’s story is also intertwined with Savannah Guthrie’s public life as a television anchor, the AP said. Guthrie wrote on Instagram in 2020 to mark her mother’s birthday that her mother, Nancy, is “my heart and my everything and my model for what a mother should be,” according to the report.
The AP story also said the family settled in Tucson in the 1970s after living in several places, including Australia, where Savannah was born. It said the couple’s son, Charles, is a retired military pilot who flew F-16s, and that he was named after their father, who Guthrie described as having “a big personality and unshakeable integrity,” the AP reported.