Cold, cranky, and ready to leave, Jenna Bush Hager didn’t expect her boyfriend’s carefully plotted proposal to turn the day upside down. .QN

Even after all these years, TODAY’s Jenna Bush Hager still blushes when she talks about the day her husband, Henry Hager, proposed. But as it turns out, her engagement story wasn’t the picture-perfect fairytale one might imagine for the daughter of a U.S. president — at least, not at first.

It was August 15, 2007, and the couple was hiking Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, Maine — a breathtaking spot where the sun greets America before anywhere else. But the morning of the proposal, Jenna admits she wasn’t feeling exactly romantic. “I was grumpy,” she confessed during a 2024 TODAY segment. “I was cold, I didn’t want to stop, and I told Henry, ‘Let’s just keep going.’”

What Jenna didn’t know was that Henry had been planning that moment for weeks — and had already received President George W. Bush’s blessing more than a month before. The soon-to-be fiancé had even arranged a private meeting with the President at Camp David, where he nervously presented a seven-point plan explaining how he’d care for Jenna. Bush reportedly stopped him halfway through, chuckling, “Henry, you don’t have to go through all that — the answer is yes.”

Back on that mountain, though, Henry was trying to get Jenna to pause and enjoy the sunrise — and she kept brushing him off. Finally, he insisted they stop for a snack. “He said, ‘Let’s have a LUNA bar and watch the sun come up,’ and I said, ‘No, I’m too cold,’” Jenna recalled with a laugh. “Then, all of a sudden, he was down on one knee.”

Surprised and emotional, Jenna’s “grumpiness” vanished in an instant. “I said yes,” she said. “And then I wasn’t cranky anymore.”

A secret service agent, quietly stationed a few paces behind, was the only witness to the intimate moment. The next day, the White House announced the engagement, releasing a simple but elegant photo of the couple and a brief statement from President and Mrs. Bush celebrating the news.

Less than a year later, the pair wed at Prairie Chapel Ranch near Crawford, Texas, in a private ceremony described as “spectacular but deeply personal.” Now, almost two decades later, the couple shares three children — Mila, Poppy, and Hal — and an enduring partnership that began on a mountain top when neither of them expected it.

Looking back, Jenna laughs about that day — how she nearly ruined her own proposal with a bad mood, and how Henry’s patience turned it into something unforgettable. “He knew before I did that we were meant to be,” she said.

And as her father’s approving smile in the background would later prove — sometimes, even Presidents can’t predict love stories this good.