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Jenna Bush Hager cried when she learned of her dad George W. Bush’s secret fiancée — despite the engagement being 10 years before he married her mom.
“My dad was engaged and he called off his wedding,” the journalist revealed during “Today with Jenna & Sheinelle” Friday, adding that her father was “very young” when it happened.
She then detailed how she accidentally found out about her dad’s hidden relationship.
“I got like a bad grade on a math test in the third grade and I was like, ‘I bet you got bad grades too, dad.’”
In turn, the former president pulled out a memory box to show her his old report cards and prove that he did not receive bad grades.
“He took out his memory box that my grandmother had made him, kind of a photo album, to show a report card. I saw a wedding announcement to someone who wasn’t my mom.”
The unexpected revelation made a young Bush Hager burst into tears.
“I started crying and made it about myself,” she recalled with a laugh. “As a third grader does.”
“He was like, ‘Oh yeah, I was engaged.’”
Reflecting on the incident as an adult, the TV personality praised her dad for being able to make such a tough decision.
“I didn’t realize in that third grade melodramatic [state], like, good thing he called it off or I wouldn’t be here. But I do think to be able to walk away from something like that, you really have to listen to yourself.”
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A decade before he wed his current wife, Laura Bush, George was engaged to his college sweetheart, Cathryn Lee Wolfman.
The former couple started dating while he was a student at Yale University and she was at Rice University, and he popped the question in 1967, per the Washington Post.
In 1999, George’s office confirmed that the two were “briefly” engaged during his junior year, but gave no reason as to why the wedding was called off.
“He thought the world of her, but they gradually drifted apart,” his spokeswoman Karen Hughes said at the time. “We would hope the media would respect her privacy.”
A Vanity Fair profile on the politician published in October 2000 described Wolfman as a “fun-loving cheerleader” who was also a “dean’s-list student” and “totally apolitical.”
The publication reported that their relationship “fizzled out” due to their busy schedules, and that Wolfman went on to work with the CIA after college.
George wed Laura in November 1977 and four years later, they welcomed their twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna.
