Real-Life Love
Jenna Bush Hager’s Husband Refuses to Reveal This Relationship Detail on ‘Today’
The charismatic Jenna Bush Hager knows what it takes to be on TV, always finding the balance between being personable without oversharing too much. The Today with Jenna & Friends star roped her husband, Henry Hager, in to help her cohost the March 27 episode of the morning show.
Right away, their love for each other — and their chemistry! — was apparent. As she reflected on their early days, Jenna was quick to interrogate her husband. However, Henry was tight-lipped about certain aspects of their relationship during his cohosting debut.
Jenna asked Henry about the first night they went out and their first kiss. He remembered both moments fondly, but when probed further about details, Henry quipped, “I don’t like to kiss and tell.” Jenna hilariously followed with, “Turns out, I do.”
Even though he didn’t discuss their first kiss, Henry was more than willing to chat about his second date with Jenna. “So, I came to pick you up at your parents’ house,” he began. Jenna interrupted to point out to the viewers that the house Henry was referring to was the White House. She asked if he was “more nervous now or then,” to which he replied, “That’s a good question. Probably then because I didn’t have as many experiences in my life.”
He continued, “I pick you up, and at the time you had Secret Service detail. I’m driving an old Bronco, and the gas meter didn’t work anymore, so I didn’t know how full the gas tank was and I got two Suburbans behind me.” His wife audibly wondered, “Did that make you a little scared, even the driving?” Hager’s honest response — “Of course.” — received some chuckles.
“I get to a huge intersection with a stop light and it’s busy because it’s rush hour because we were going to get dinner, and I realized my truck is running out of gas, but I’m in the lefthand lane, and there’s a gas station right here,” Henry revealed. “When the light turned green, I peeled hard to the left with just enough gas and blocked three lanes of traffic from the opposite direction and made it just up into the gas station and totally ran out of gas and my truck started rolling backward. The Secret Service was right behind my truck. I slammed on the emergency brake and just did a little bumper tap.”
That shocking revelation made Jenna stress, “You didn’t damage the car. Don’t worry, American people. Your tax dollars weren’t used to fix it.”
To round up their trip down memory lane, Jenna did share the story of their first kiss. “I’m just going to say it. It was to Little Troy to a song we can’t say on TV,” she reminisced. “We were dancing, and all of a sudden you shot your shot.” Henry lightheartedly fired back, “Well, I don’t think we can say that on the Today a.m. hour television, but I went in for the kiss, yeah.”
Plenty of years have passed since those early days. The duo tied the knot in 2008 and have welcomed three kids in their marriage: Mila, 11, Poppy, 9, and Hal, 5.
The 36-year-old father of three isn’t used to being in front of the camera, but he did a great job as his wife’s cohost. He started out in politics, but the businessman has now become the managing director of Waterous Energy Fund, a “Calgary-based private equity firm pursuing investments in the Canadian oil and gas sector.”
