Jenna Bush Hager has recalled the emotional childhood moment when she learned that her father, former President George W. Bush, had once been engaged to another woman.
Years before marrying former first lady Laura Bush, George was engaged to his college sweetheart, Cathryn Lee Wolfman.
The couple began dating while George attended Yale and Cathryn studied at Rice University. He proposed in 1967, according to an engagement announcement published in the Houston Chronicle.
The wedding never took place, and the couple eventually parted ways. George went on to marry Laura in November 1977, and they welcomed twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna, four years later, in November 1981.
Jenna, now 44, recently described the shock of discovering that her father had been engaged before he met her mother.
Appearing on Today last week, Jenna said: “My dad actually called off a wedding. My dad was engaged, and he called off his wedding. They were really young.”
George had never told her about the relationship, she said. Jenna learned about it only after finding a “wedding announcement” among his personal keepsakes.
The discovery came after Jenna received a poor grade on a math test during third grade.
Jenna Bush Hager has shared the emotional childhood moment when she discovered that her father, George W. Bush, had once been engaged
George began dating Cathryn Lee Wolfman while he was at Yale and she attended Rice; he proposed in 1967, according to a Houston Chronicle engagement announcement. He is pictured in his Yale portrait
After George scolded her over the result, Jenna said she responded that he probably had not always earned perfect grades when he was young either.
He then brought out a “memory box” containing his old report cards. Inside, Jenna noticed the unexpected wedding announcement.
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“He took out his memory box that my grandmother had made him to show a report card, and I saw a wedding announcement to somebody that wasn’t my mom,” Jenna recalled.
“I started crying and made it about myself, as a third-grader does.”
She added: “I didn’t realize in that third-grade sort of melodramatic [way], good thing he called it off or we wouldn’t have been here.”
Jenna also praised her father for having the courage to leave a relationship that was not right for him.
“You really do have to listen to yourself,” she said.
Few details are publicly known about George’s first serious relationship. However, a 1967 announcement in the Houston Chronicle stated: “George Walker Bush, son of Congressman-elect and Mrs. George H.W. Bush of Houston and Washington, will take pretty Cathryn Lee Wolfman as his bride.”
George and Cathryn never married and eventually went their separate ways. He married Laura Bush in November 1977, and they became parents to twin daughters Barbara and Jenna in November 1981
Jenna said her father had never mentioned his college romance, which she discovered in third grade after finding a wedding announcement among his keepsakes
When asked about it by the Houston Press in 1999, a Bush spokesperson confirmed: ‘Yes, Governor Bush, while he was in college, was very briefly engaged to a very fine person he thinks the world of. Ultimately, they went their separate ways.’
They added that the pair do not keep in touch.
A 2000 Vanity Fair profile on George described Cathryn as a ‘fun-loving cheerleader,’ who was also a ‘dean’s-list student’ and ‘totally apolitical.’
The publication, which interviewed many of George’s friends, reported that the relationship simply ‘fizzled out’ due to their busy schedules, and that Wolfman went on to work with the CIA after college.