Despite the buzz surrounding the Olympics opening ceremony, Hoda Kotb was most awestruck by meeting Tom Cruise in Paris. Kotb shared a selfie on Instagram with Cruise, both drenched from the rain. The iconic photo shows Kotb beaming in a poncho, with Cruise in all black, hair soaked.
Although the Olympics opening ceremony happened on Friday, the spectacle that left Kotb, 59, awestruck was meeting Tom Cruise, 62. Kotb took to Instagram to share an iconic selfie she snapped with Cruise in Paris” pouring rain.
“Do you know when you dream of meeting Tom Cruise… And then it finally happens,” she captioned a very damp-looking photo of the two.
In the photo, Kotb beams with excitement standing next to Cruise. She wears a poncho that exposes only a circle of her smiling face while the actor with wet hair wears all black.
“In your dream were you wearing a poncho?” Jenna Bush Hager joked in the comments.
“Icons only,” Savannah Guthrie wrote.
Cruise and Kotb just casually bumped into each other on a bridge over the Seine, Today crews on the scene told the outlet.
Céline Dion wowed at the opening ceremony. It marked her first performance since halting her worldwide tour and stepping back from public life after revealing her diagnosis with Stiff Person Syndrome in December 2022. She performed Edith Piaf”s famous work, “Hymne à L”Amour” (the Hymn to Love) with the help of a full orchestra. The French ballad was written to the love of Piaf’s life, boxer Marcel Cerdan, who died in a plane crash barely a month after it was first performed.
Last month, Kotb sat down with the 56-year-old global superstar to discuss her health battle with Stiff Person Syndrome and her future as she navigates her medical struggles.
“First of all, she”s an incredible fighter. I had no idea what she had been through, how close she came at some point to actually not surviving it,” Kotb shared of Dion on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen. “And now here she is, and she”s singing again.”
Dion shared with Kotb that singing with her medical condition felt “like being strangled,” and causes parts of her body to spasm. Living with Stiff Person Syndrome was so intense for Dion at times that it caused her to break a rib.
“It can be in the abdominal. It can be in the spine, in the ribs. But it feels like if I point my feet, it will stay in it,” Dion explained to Kotb. “Or if I cook, my fingers or my hands will get in position. It”s cramping, but it”s like you”re in the position of you cannot unlock them.”
Kotb teased after their interview that Dion had plans to return to the stage for a live performance. When a caller questioned whether that appearance might take place during the Paris Olympics, Kotb admitted to not knowing for sure, but said she thought that would be “spectacular.”
“That would be amazing, but I don”t know,” Kotb said at the time. “I know she”s going to be performing live again, though. I don”t know where.”
When Dion returned to the stage for the first time in years at the Olympics, she looked stunning in a crystal-studded ensemble. Her show-stopping performance was a full-circle moment nearly 30 years in the making, as Dion opened the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, with a performance of her song “The Power of the Dream.”
ET spoke with neurology specialist Dr. Duarte Machado prior to Dion”s comeback performance, who dubbed her return to the stage “extraordinary.”
“Given that just a month and a half ago, she was on national television with her interview to discuss the difficulties that she”s been having… to get to this point of being able to be on a global stage now once again, and and sing at the opening ceremony, it is quite notable,” he marveled, “and a victory, really, for anyone with chronic condition — especially those with SPS — that with perseverance and the right medical care, that such victories can come true.”