Jenna Bush Hager's first argument with her mother-in-law is one that was probably to be expected after getting married to her husband, Henry Hager.
Because as the saying goes, "Mama knows best," and Margaret Hager apparently considered she surely did. On the episode on January 24, 2024, of Today With Hoda & Jenna, the cohosts talked about compromising in relationships when Jenna recalled the time she refused to compromise over hanging a poster that her mother-in-law insisted should be hung due to it being Henry's favorite.
“I just have to say, when Henry and I got married — and I love my mother-in-law so much, she’s the best, she watches our show, I love her. But she handed me a poster of a baseball player that Henry loved from Wake Forest, and she said, ‘Now you need to put this on your wall. Your husband loves this player,’” Jenna recalled.
She added that she had "some sort of rage" that came out in the heat of the debate. She ended up telling her MIL that she didn't like the poster and therefore refused to hang it up in the home she now shared with her husband.
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Despite Jenna's firm opposition, Margaret insisted that she needed to compromise. “I said, ‘No I will not! This should stay in your home in his childhood bedroom where basketball posters go to die,’” the cohost recalled saying.
Of course, Hoda Kotb wondered if Margaret got upset with her daughter-in-law's reply. Jenna, who says she knows her MIL was just trying to teach her about how marriage works, has thankfully never seen the poster since that day.
“I probably should have just graciously said, ‘Thank you so much for this poster,’ and then trashed it later — which I might have done, I don’t remember, it was almost 20 years ago,” she said. Hoda replied, “By the way, you were a different person then."
“I had just gotten married and I had some Barbie heels on so I was like, ‘Let’s stand tall,’” the mother of three joked. She and Henry first met in 2004 and wed in 2008.
The couple welcomed their first child in 2013, another one in 2015, and their youngest in 2019. She shared that she spends a lot of time "making sure that each child has the love that I know I feel for them."
When it comes to her family with Henry, the cohost couldn't be more grateful, stating that it has brought her more joy than ever. In interview after her third child was born, she shared, "It's fun. I'm really happy.”
