Jenna Bush Hager has seen the speculation about why she hasn’t been wearing her wedding ring on Today.
“I had a bad wedding ring situation. I’m not wearing one now because I broke my finger,” Bush Hager, 43, shared on the Wednesday, February 26, episode of Today With Jenna & Friends before reassuring fans her relationship with her husband, Henry Hager, is as strong as ever. “Don’t worry. I’ve seen some of the comments. Henry and I are still very happily married.”
Bush Hager first revealed she broke her finger back in August 2024, telling Hoda Kotb at the time that she injured herself after losing her “lucky necklace” after losing it in the ocean. “I’ve tripped, I got a black eye, I broke my ring finger,” she said. “Henry claims I just sprained it, but it was blue.”
Bush Hager has had some other bad luck with her ring finger. On Wednesday, she recalled losing a piece of her engagement ring while celebrating her pal and Today colleague Savannah Guthrie’s 50th birthday a few years ago.
Jenna Bush Hager Pays Tribute to Husband Henry Hager on His Birthday
“Sometimes, for my best friends’ birthdays, I feel like I really have to give it my all. I gave it my all, like, [I was] one of the last people standing,” Bush Hager recalled. “And Henry was kind of grumpy. He went to bed a little earlier, sort of like, ‘Aren’t you coming with me?’ And I’m like, ‘No, I’m not coming with you!’”
The next morning, she woke up to discover one of her ring’s gemstones was missing. “I was already a little bit on thin ice for my wild behavior, so I look down and I’m like, ‘Oh no. Do I tell him this now or do I wait?’” she stated. “I went ahead and just said, ‘Honey, I know I lost a little bit of dignity last night. I also lost your grandmother’s sapphire.’”
When asked by guest cohost Heather McMahan how Hager, 46, took the news, Bush Hager said, “He was OK. He’s a tolerant person. My mom [Laura Bush] calls him a ‘saint,’ which is really just saying that I’m difficult to be with. And I never found it again.”
Bush Hager tied the knot with her husband in 2008. The couple have since welcomed three kids — daughters Mila, 11, and Poppy, 9, and son Hal, 5.
In August 2024, Bush Hager exclusively told Us Weekly why she had dialed back on sharing personal stories about her family on the NBC morning show. “I think as my kids get older — and I know Hoda and I talk about this constantly — we try to navigate, like, what’s their story to tell and if we’re ever stepping over something that would make them feel bad later because things exist forever now, which is not in the case of when we were growing up,” she explained at the time.
While she appreciates that Hager “lets me be me” on TV, Bush Hager noted that she also respects “that sort of tug-and-pull where he’s like, ‘Hold on, honey. Don’t share much.’”
In particular, Bush Hager recalled her husband was “annoyed” by a comment she made on Today about wishing she had dated more people before settling down. “That irritated him because I didn’t mean I should have dated more. It was more of what I want my girls to know. I want my girls to know that they are the choosers,” she told Us. “I just mean in college, I felt sort of shy to date people. I had [the] Secret Service following me every day, which is something I’ve sort of dug into. And so, I felt I kept with the same boyfriend because I felt like that was sort of safer and I cared what people thought about me.”
