Jenna Shares How She Discovered Dad George W. Bush Broke Off an Engagement

A poor grade on a third-grade math test led to a startling discovering when Jenna Bush Hager was a child.

Jenna shared the oblique way she discovered her father, former President George W. Bush, had previously been engaged to another woman before calling off the wedding.

During their chat on TODAY Sept. 25, Sheinelle Jones and Jenna discussed if they knew anyone who had canceled a wedding, sparked by Oprah Winfrey’s recent comments about trusting one’s intuition.

“My dad actually called off a wedding,” Jenna said. “My dad was engaged, and he called off his wedding. They were really young.”

Jenna had no idea until she earned a bad score on a math test in third grade. When her dad was upset with her, she fired back that he probably did the same thing as a kid.

“He was like, ‘No, I didn’t.’ He took out his memory box that my grandmother had made him, or like kind of a photo album, to show a report card, and I saw a wedding announcement to somebody that wasn’t my mom,” Jenna said.

“I started crying and made it about myself, as a third-grader does,” she added.

Bush got engaged in 1967 to Cathryn Lee Wolfman, a fellow college student at the time. The two were both juniors, Bush at Yale and Wolfman at Rice, according to the Houston Press. An announcement of their engagement ran in the Houston Chronicle on Jan. 1, 1967.

Bush ultimately married Jenna’s mother, former first lady Laura Bush, in 1977. The two are parents to Jenna and her twin sister, Barbara.

“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 said.

The discussion originated from a clip of Winfrey advising people not to ignore their intuition, posing the example of people going through with a wedding when they know they shouldn’t.

Jenna said she once attended a wedding and could sense her friend reluctantly going through with it. The couple ultimately got divorced years later.

“To be able to able to walk away from something like that, you really do have to listen to yourself,” Jenna said.