You'll Love the Smart Dating Advice Jenna Bush Hager Gave Hoda Kotb on TODAY
This is solid advice for anyone on the singles scene.
We all need a friend like Jenna Bush Hager.
Since her co-anchor Hoda Kotb is currently single, Hager put her social network to good use to help the mom of two find someone to spend time with. And as she revealed, it wasn't just a matter of asking around. Hager has a system, and it's a good one. Singletons, take note.
Jenna Bush Hager's strategic method for finding set-ups
As she revealed on TODAY, Hager is intentional when looking for dates for her single friends. "[Usually] you end up asking the same people. 'Hey Henry [Hager's husband], who’s cute at your work that would be good for Hoda? Hey, you know, blah blah blah.' Stop that," she cautioned, using her co-host as an example. A better way to do it, says Hager, is, "You go outside your zone."
Recalling how she set up TODAY's senior vice president, Libby Leist, with her now-husband Hager said, "I texted three people: My sister who was in graduate school; our one friend that had just moved to Connecticut; and another friend that had just moved out of the city, too." That way, she wasn't just canvassing the same New York set Libby had probably already explored.
For Libby, it worked. "And guess what? One of the friends had somebody," Hager said.
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This is how Jenna Bush Hager found someone for Hoda Kotb
"By the way, you’re really good at setting people up. As I know," Kotb said, referring to the mystery guy she's been seeing. Though Kotb isn't sharing too many details about her new relationship, she did let it slip that she's been on a few dates with a man her co-host connected her with.
"Jenna is like, 'How did I do?' because she wants to go to heaven. Apparently, if you match three people up [you get to go]," Kotb told Entertainment Tonight, calling, Hager "a great picker."
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"I had a great time...I had a great time on our date. I loved it," Kotb continued. "There has been a second one already. Hey, that's how it goes...We'll have our third coming up. It's really fun."
In fact, mutual friends is how Hager ended up with her husband, Henry Hager. “He worked for my dad,” Jenna recalled on TODAY in 2019. “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?’” Twenty years later, they're still together.
