Politico – The long-awaited shakeup of the “Today” show, expected last week but apparently delayed amidst the news of Osama bin Laden’s death, is now official: Meredith Vieira is leaving the show next month, and Ann Curry is replacing her as co-anchor.

Nathalie Morales will step up be news anchor, and Savannah Guthrie is being promoted to be co-anchor of the show’s third hour.

Vieira choked up a bit as she delivered the news to her audience this morning.

“After months of personal reflection and private conversations between my family and my friends, I’ve decided to leave ‘Today’ in June,” she said. “And even as I say this, and I know it’s the right thing, I’m really sad because for the past – I like to say 10 years, but it’s really five – this has been my second home.”

She said she was leaving to spend more time with her three children and her husband, Richard Cohen, a former TV producer who has written about his struggles with multiple sclerosis and colon cancer.

“Time is one of those weird things,” Vieira said. “You can never get enough of it. And it just keeps ticking away. And I know that I want to spend more of mine with my husband, Richard, and my kids, Ben, Gabe and Lilly, who are rolling their eyes right now saying, ‘No more time, Mom!’ But I’m going to do it anyway.”
Vieira said she hoped to stay “in the NBC family.”

Curry, who has been on the show since 1997, said she felt like the high school nerd who just got asked to the prom by the quarterback of the football team.

“Meredith is universally adored here at ‘Today,’” she said. “If I could chose, you would not go.”

UPDATE: “The Daily Rundown,” the 9 a.m. MSNBC show that Guthrie co-hosts with Chuck Todd, will carry on under the same name without Guthrie, according to MSNBC.