Savannah Guthrie is 5 feet 10 inches tall, according to Closer Weekly’s breakdown of the Today cast. That makes her the tallest woman on the show’s anchor team, a fact that has trailed her since she first sat beside Matt Lauer in 2011. NBC has never published an official measurement, so the number rests on reporting and on-screen comparisons, not on a medical record.
This guide explains why other sites list her at 5 feet 7 inches or 5 feet 9 inches, how she compares with her co-stars, and why she has been known to read the news without shoes. It also covers the late-night joke that turned a tabloid complaint into a punchline.
How Tall Is Savannah Guthrie?
Savannah Guthrie stands 5 feet 10 inches tall, or about 178 centimeters, going by the figure Closer Weekly reports for the Today host. The same report lists Hoda Kotb at 5 feet 9 inches, which puts Guthrie about an inch above her former cohost.
- Imperial: 5 feet 10 inches
- Metric: about 1.78 meters (178 cm)
- Status: widely reported, not officially confirmed
- Lowest published figure: 5 feet 7 inches
That number is widely reported, not officially confirmed. NBC has never released a measurement, and Guthrie has not shared one in public interviews. Every height you see online is an estimate built from photos, co-star comparisons, and repetition.
For context, the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics puts the average adult American woman at about 63.5 inches, or 5 feet 3.5 inches. At 70 inches, Guthrie is roughly 6.5 inches above that average. She is also about an inch taller than the average American man, who measures around 69 inches in the same data.
Why Published Heights Disagree by Three Inches
Search her name and you will find 5 feet 7 inches, 5 feet 9 inches, 5 feet 9.5 inches, and 5 feet 10 inches. That spread covers three full inches, which is a lot for someone who appears on national television every weekday.
The first reason is the lack of a primary source. Without a number from Guthrie, NBC, or a doctor, each celebrity profile page picks its own, and many copy one another. A figure repeated across ten pages looks like consensus but can trace back to a single guess.
The second reason is footwear and posture. Heels add two to four inches, and a photo taken while someone leans toward a shorter person can shave off an inch or more. Sites that estimate height from red carpet pictures end up with numbers that depend on the shoes and the camera angle.
The third reason is conversion. A listing of 1.75 meters becomes 5 feet 9 inches, while 1.78 meters becomes 5 feet 10 inches. One careless rounding can start a new version of the story.
I weighed the sources by who stands behind them. Closer Weekly is a magazine with an editorial process, and TODAY.com is NBC’s own site, so its barefoot story below comes straight from the network. Most of the pages listing 5 feet 7 inches are anonymous and give no basis for the number.
My read is that 5 feet 10 inches is the most defensible figure, because it matches how she looks beside the people she works with. The 5 feet 7 inches listing is the hardest to square with that evidence, since she is routinely described as the tallest woman on the set.
How Savannah Guthrie Compares With Her Today Co-Stars
Guthrie has spent more than a decade beside very different builds. Closer Weekly names Willie Geist as the tallest Today star at 6 feet 4 inches, with Guthrie as the tallest female cohost and Kotb just behind her.
- Willie Geist: 6 feet 4 inches
- Savannah Guthrie: 5 feet 10 inches
- Hoda Kotb: 5 feet 9 inches
The gap with Kotb is small enough that the two can look level on screen, especially when shoes or posture change the picture. The gap with Geist is a different story, since he towers over nearly everyone in the studio.
Seated comparisons on the Today couch are less reliable. Torso length varies a lot between people of the same standing height, so two cohosts who differ by an inch standing can look identical, or even reversed, once they sit.
The pairing that drew the most commentary was Matt Lauer, her first co-anchor. Closer Weekly reports that headlines criticized her for being too tall to stand next to her shorter colleagues, and that Jay Leno later pointed out the height difference between the two on his show.
Lauer left Today in November 2017, and Kotb took over the second chair, forming the first all-female anchor team in the show’s history. Kotb stepped away from the show in January 2025, and Craig Melvin now sits beside Guthrie at the anchor desk.
Why Savannah Guthrie Reads the News Barefoot
At the Today news desk, Guthrie often takes her shoes off. She explained the habit to TODAY.com: someone told her, during one of her first fill-in appearances, that she was “too tall for the set.”
The logic is probably simple. A desk and camera framing built around a shorter anchor leave little room above the head, and heels push a tall woman toward the top of the shot. Taking off her shoes brought her down by a couple of inches without anyone rebuilding the furniture.
The habit became a running joke. During one of her early appearances, Lauer teased her on air about buying shoes that fit while cameras showed her feet resting on a blanket. Lester Holt later pointed out her feet after a news read, and a colleague’s photo of her barefoot at the desk drew a playful reply from her on social media.
She also owns a stack of novelty socks, which turned the situation into part of her on-air personality. It is a small example of a bigger point: television sets tend to be built around an average build, and anyone outside it finds a workaround.
The Jay Leno Interview and the Too Tall Headlines
Guthrie joined the Today anchor group in 2011 alongside Lauer, Al Roker, and Natalie Morales. Soon, headlines began questioning whether she was too tall to stand next to her colleagues.
In August 2012, she appeared on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, where the host raised the subject and showed a photo of her beside Lauer. She answered with humor, saying she was going for the “Xena: Warrior Princess thing.”
She did not argue the point or apologize for it. The timing mattered, because NBC had officially named her Lauer’s co-anchor only weeks earlier, after Ann Curry announced her exit from the show. A defensive reply would have fed the story.
Humor worked better than a rebuttal. The coverage moved on, and the height question settled into the affectionate, low-stakes trivia it remains today.
For readers searching her height after that interview, the Xena line is often the only quote they find. It captures her attitude well, since she treats the topic as material for a joke.
The Career Behind the Height Question
Born December 27, 1971, in Melbourne, Australia, Guthrie grew up in Tucson, Arizona. She trained as both a journalist and a lawyer, earning a law degree from Georgetown, and began in local news at KMIZ in Columbia, Missouri.
NBC News hired her in 2007 as a legal analyst and correspondent. She served as a White House correspondent from 2008 to 2011 and co-anchored MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown in 2010 and 2011 before moving to Today.
She took the co-anchor chair in July 2012 and also serves as the show’s chief legal analyst. Outside the studio, she co-wrote the children’s book Princesses Wear Pants in 2017 and published the faith-themed Mostly What God Does in 2019.
She married Michael Feldman in 2014, and the couple has two children, Vale and Charley.
Did Height Help or Hurt Her Rise?
Some sites claim her height gives her a commanding on-camera presence, but nothing in NBC’s announcement of her promotion points to it.
When NBC News President Steve Capus named her Lauer’s co-anchor in 2012, he pointed to her range. In his words, she had anchored Nightly News, moderated Meet the Press, co-hosted the 9 a.m. hour of Today, and provided legal analysis for Supreme Court coverage, all within the previous week. That is an argument about her résumé.
The fair reading is that height became a talking point. It forced a few set adjustments, like the bare feet, and gave tabloids an easy headline. Her promotion rested on versatility and the trust of her colleagues.
Why the Height Story Has Lasted So Long
Guthrie has appeared on a live morning broadcast for over a decade, so her proportions get compared with her co-workers every weekday. Few celebrity heights get that much repeated, side-by-side testing.
The barefoot detail also gives the story a visual hook. A viewer who sees an anchor reading headlines in socks is likely to remember it and search for the reason, which keeps the topic alive in search results.
There is also a gap in the record. Because no official height exists, curious readers keep checking, and each new profile page adds another number. That cycle explains why a plain question has produced so many answers.
Other Body Measurements Are Not Public
Many profile pages pair height with weight, dress size, and other body statistics for Guthrie. None of those figures comes from her, NBC, or any named source, so they are not worth repeating here.
Her public record covers her work, her books, and her family life. The physical detail she has addressed publicly is the one that affected her job, the set, and she did it with a joke and no number.
How to Check Any Celebrity Height Claim
Guthrie’s case works as a template for checking any celebrity height figure. A few habits separate a reliable number from a recycled one.
- Look for a primary source, such as the person’s own statement or an official bio.
- Compare the figure with co-stars whose heights are better documented.
- Account for heels, posture, and camera angle before trusting a photo comparison.
- Check the metric-to-imperial conversion, since rounding creates false disagreements.
- Treat a number repeated across many sites as a single claim until you find where it began.
Applied to Savannah Guthrie, those checks leave 5 feet 10 inches as the best-supported answer, with 5 feet 9 inches as a reasonable lower bound. Because no official figure exists, the number is worth revisiting if NBC or Guthrie ever states one.