Jenna Bush Hager is recalling a time when she called her brother-in-law, Craig Coyne, by the wrong name — at his own wedding.
The Today With Hoda & Jenna coanchor, 42, revealed that while giving the toast at twin sister Barbara Bush’s wedding, she proclaimed, “Now, welcome to our family Greg,” rather than Craig.
“I don’t even know what it was,” she recalled on the Monday, December 4, episode of the show. “I’m not sure where it came from because I know him very well.”
Barbara, 42, and Coyne tied the knot for the first time in October 2018, and again in April 2019. The first small family ceremony was to ensure former President George H.W. Bush, Barbara and Jenna’s grandfather, could attend. (He died at age 94 one month later.)
“I’d already given it one time!” Jenna said of her flubbed toast. “Half the people there were like, ‘Did she just call him the wrong name?’”
While telling the story, Jenna pointed out that she was pregnant with her son, Hal, at the time. “I’d like to just put it out there, my brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders,” she quipped. (Jenna shares daughters Mila, 10, Poppy, 8, and Hal, 4, with husband Henry Hager. The pair wed in 2008.)
After the admission, cohost Hoda Kotb asked Jenna if her brother-in-law forgave her, to which she replied, “I think so.”
Despite the mishap, Jenna has remained close with her sister. Last month, the two went to dinner with their parents, Laura Bush and former President George W. Bush, to celebrate Laura’s 77th birthday and the pair’s 46th wedding anniversary.
After the reunion, Jenna revealed it was the first time they had had dinner with just the four of them in a decade.
“We went to dinner just the four of us and what we realized is, ‘I don’t think we’ve been just the four of us in almost 20 years,’” Jenna said during an episode of the show in November.
Jenna quickly clarified she had exaggerated, and it had actually been more like “a decade.”
“I’ve had a husband for a long time, we’ve had children for 10 years,” she said. “Barbara has had boyfriends and husbands, etc, etc.”
When Kotb, 59, laughed at the comment and asked Jenna what she meant by that, she explained: “[Barbara] had boyfriends, and then she got married, so that’s the etc.”
