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Today’s Jenna Bush Hager Shocks Hoda Kotb With Strange Confession About Nickname
Jenna Bush Hager left cohost Hoda Kotb shocked when she revealed the nickname her husband, Henry Hager, had for her when they first started dating during the Wednesday, June 26, fourth hour of Today.
The conversation kicked off when the ladies discussed how Selena Gomez‘s boyfriend, Benny Blanco, called her “my wittle” in an Instagram Story post.
Jenna, 42, then asked Hoda, 59, if she liked having a nickname.
“Kind of, like usually,” she responded, saying that when it came to partners, she was fine with “honey, sweetie, blah blah,” and that as a young girl everyone called her “Hodie.”
When Hoda asked Jenna what Henry, 45, calls her, she responded, “Well, he called me shiny.” As her cohost appeared visibly confused, the Dallas, Texas, native continued, “Yeah, shiny cat… when we first got together,” although she didn’t elaborate on how the unusual nickname came about.
Jenna said she calls her husband “Hank” and said that he now refers to her as “honey, baby…,” which makes their three children go “ew!”
When it came to Henry’s nickname, Jenna revealed, “He likes it, his mother did not like it. You know when you’re naming a child and you’re like, ‘don’t call him anything!’ His mother was hoping for non-Hank, but then everybody calls him Hank.”
Things took a strange turn when Jenna shared how her eldest daughter, Mila, wanted the pair to have Kardashian-Jenner connected nicknames for each other.
Mila, 11, has called her mom “Kylie Jenner” and wanted to be referred to as “Stormi,” in honor of the lip kit mogul’s daughter Stormi Webster’s first name.
However, Kylie’s daughter’s moniker caused a fight amongst Jenna’s children, including her son Hal.
“But then last night, Hal was jealous so he asked that I call Mila ‘Rainy’ and call him ‘Stormi,'” she confessed while adding that her kids have another name for their mom but wouldn’t divulge it on the air. In addition to Mila and Hal, 4, Jenna and Henry share daughter Poppy, 8.
The former first daughter shared the heartwarming reason she came up with Poppy’s unusual name during an episode of Today With Hoda & Jenna in May 2019, as well as in her birth announcement.
When she was born in August 2015, Jenna shared in an Instagram post, “Welcome to the WORLD Poppy Louise Hager — named after my darling Gamps who went by Poppy during his childhood. We are in LOVE.” The name was in honor of Jenna’s late grandfather, former President George H.W. Bush, who died in 2018.
“He was not expecting it, so he cried,” Jenna recalled on Today. “And of course, I cry at like Teacher Appreciation Day commercials (so) I’m, like, crying over the baby and Henry’s kind of like wiping the baby’s face off because there’s like tears in the baby’s mouth.”
After her grandfather’s death at the age of 94, Jenna broke down in tears on Today while recalling a piece of life advice he gave her.
“It reminded me of this evening I spent with my grandpa and he could barely speak and I was sitting between him and he leaned over to me and he’s like, ‘Don’t forget to enjoy the game,’” she said.
“And it was at the end of his life and at sort of the beginning of mine, relatively. And to hear somebody that had done everything, be like, ‘Don’t forget to be in it,’ to enjoy it, to be part of it, I’ll never forget it,” Jenna added as she wiped away her tears.
