Jenna Bush Hager’s husband Henry got a warm welcome when he co-hosted on TODAY with his wife — from their three kids.
“Honey, we have a little special surprise message for you,” Jenna told Henry on TODAY with Jenna & Friends on March 27.
“Dad! I’m excited for you,” the couple’s three children, Mila, 11, Poppy, 9 and Hal, 5, said in unison in a video played on the show.
“I hope … I bet you’re going to do the best,” said Hal.
“Dad, good luck,” added Mila. “Do what you practiced in the car, because it was really good. Good luck, Dad!”
All three kids signed off, “Bye! I love you! We love you! Good luck!”
Henry loved the message. “So sweet,” he said, telling Jenna. “You managed to get our kids into the TODAY Show.”
“It’s your favorite thing, right?” said Jenna. “Not really,” joked Henry.
Jenna shared Henry’s prep routine leading up to his co-hosting duties.
“By the way, Mila has the best impersonation of you practicing in the car: ‘You know, I’m just going to be authentic, I’m just going to lead from my heart and I’m just going to say all the ways I love Mom,’” said Jenna.
Henry clarified: “This is very different from my day job, so I’ve been really trying to focus on thinking about what this moment is actually going to be like.”
Jenna divulged her husband’s off-camera romanticism.
“I just want to show you what I found on my desk this morning,” Jenna told viewers, holding up a handwritten note.
“He drew this little picture that’s us sitting on a bench and that’s the sun rising,” she says, adding, “It says, ‘Let’s do this. I love you.’ I just want to say — for the five men that are watching — little notes like this go a really long way.”
Henry and Jenna met in 2004 on her dad George W. Bush’s reelection campaign trail.
“A friend of mine from college was like, his intern at work, and we were going to watch the Texas game, and they were like, ‘Can we bring Henry?’” Jenna recalled on TODAY in 2019.
Jenna later said on TODAY that she knew Henry was “the one” because “I was completely myself, and he loved it.”
Henry recapped his first impressions on TODAY.
“My first thought was that you made my world shine so much brighter,” he said.
“You didn’t think I was hot?” Jenna interrupted.
“You were hot,” Henry reassured his wife. “You were funny and it was an adventure from day one.”
Jenna also teased her husband about his “date night vibes.”
“Super relaxed, typically not very organized, which is nice because you and I are very busy and we have three beautiful children at home,” said Henry. “For us to be able to find some time, just the two of us — which is amazing, we love to do that — it’s usually last minute and it’s early.”