Jenna Bush Hager Teared Up Sharing Her Grandparents' Secret to Their Long Marriage
"I see this, it's true, it's not just words," the TODAY host said of how her grandparents approached marriage.
From meeting while she was a First Daughter of the United States to sneaking out of the White House and ultimately getting engaged on a mountaintop, Jenna Bush Hager's love story with husband Henry Hager is one for the books. And the TODAY co-anchor has had inspiring relationship examples to look up to throughout her life. Including her late grandparents, President George H.W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush, who once shared with their granddaughter what their secret was to staying together, and in love, for over seven decades.
Jenna shared during a 2016 episode of TODAY that she would always ask her grandparents, who both passed away in 2018, to talk about their love for each other any chance she got. And during one conversation, they shared what their secret was to their long, loving marriage.
"We always ask our grandparents, whenever we get a chance, to talk about their love and how they've kept it going," she told co-host Hoda Kotb. "I don't think it's always been easy. But what they say is they both — and I see this, it's true, it's not just words — go 75% of the way. You can't both go 50%. You both have to go 75% of the way. And they've done it."
Jenna Bush Hager choked up talking about her grandparents' marriage of over 70 years
Jenna added that their deep love for each other was evident in the later years of their life, even in those simple everyday moments. "And now, you go into their house in Houston or in Maine, they're watching Law & Order really loud and have earphones on," she said on TODAY. "They're both in La-Z-Boys and they're holding each other's hands."
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Indeed, Jenna's grandparents were known to enjoy each other's company while watching Olivia Benson and the rest of the SVU cast together. When Brooke Shields joined Jenna as a TODAY guest host in March 2025, the actress recalled how the Bushes invited her to watch an episode of Law & Order: SVU with them.
“I was doing a movie in Boston, and I get a phone call. Doesn’t say who he is. Literally says, ‘Excuse me, young lady. I hear you’re in the area. If you do not come to Kennebunkport, you are in trouble. And it, of course, was Papa Bush," Shields shared, adding that while she was staying with them at the Bush family's oceanfront home in Maine, she discovered their living room was flooding. She needed to tell them, of course, but felt "the fear of God" that she had to deliver bad news when they might be sleeping.
“They had their little TV dinners, their little BarcaLoungers, their little La-Z-Boys, they were watching SVU," Shields recalled, adding that she joined them in front of the TV. “[Barbara] goes, ‘Okay, ask her, ask her.’ And [George] goes, ‘Well, who do you think did it?’... And I was like, ‘I don’t know who did it, but it’s probably the person who you think least did it.’ And I sat there in between [them] and we watched the rest of SVU and I was like, ‘This is a moment of my life that was so special.'"
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George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush got married in 1945
Tying the knot on January 6, 1945, George H.W. and Barbara Bush had one of the longest marriages in U.S. presidential history at over 73 years. At the time of their nuptials at the First Presbyterian Church in Rye, New York, the former president was a Navy pilot in World War II and had gone on to name three of his military planes after his bride.
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During a 2020 segment on TODAY, Jenna read a sweet letter George H.W. Bush had written his wife on their 49th wedding anniversary.
"Will you marry me? Oops, I forgot you did that 49 years ago today!" the touching love letter began. "I was very happy on that day in 1945, but I am even happier today. You have given me joy that few men know. I have climbed perhaps the highest mountain in the world, but even that cannot hold a candle to being Barbara's husband."
