Jenna Bush Hager is thinking ahead.
The 43-year-old Today with Jenna & Friends co-host opened up about her dream plans for her “next chapter” after leaving the Today show.
“I have this sort of dream — I just think everybody should have chapters in their lives — I have a dream — I don’t know how realistic it is — but when the Jenna & Friends chapter comes to a close…” Bush Hager began on the Wednesday, Aug. 6 episode of the show.
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“Well, why would that ever happen?” guest co-host Matt Rogers cut in.
“Well.. linear television, baby!” Bush Hager said, laughing and shrugging. “Who knows? But when I’m ready to go to my next chapter, I think it would be so nice to move back to Texas and let my kids — I went to a big public high school — have a different life.”
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The conversation came when Bush Hager and Rogers were discussing whether they’d ever consider moving back to their hometown. The daughter of former President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush grew up in Austin, Texas, and said she’d happily return to the city to raise her three kids with husband Henry Hager.
“Isn’t Austin great? I love Austin,” Bush Hager, who is a mom to daughters Mila, 12, Poppy, 9, and son Hal, 6, gushed.
The morning show host has already tried to instill some of her Texas childhood experiences in her three kids. Earlier this summer, while discussing the tragic flooding in Kerrville, Texas, Bush Hager revealed that she sends her kids to Texas camps every summer.
She said that after her husband Henry asked why they sent their kids all the way to Texas, she replied, “Because of the love that’s there,” adding, “Texas camps are institutions.”
Bush Hager joined the Today show as a correspondent in 2009. In 2019, she began co-anchoring the show’s fourth hour alongside Hoda Kotb after Kathie Lee Gifford’s exit. The pair co-hosted Today with Hoda & Jenna together until this past January, when Kotb left Today to focus on her daughters, Haley and Hope, and her new wellness venture.
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Since Kotb’s exit, Bush Hager has had a series of celebrity guest co-hosts while keeping an eye out for a permanent replacement.
“We’re still searching,” Bush Hager told PEOPLE in June. “We definitely want somebody permanent at some point just because that’s our show, and I think the Today show is such a family.”
“So to have somebody sit in that seat means a lot to all of us. So it will happen,” she continued. “I think we’ve all just been kind of living day by day and we don’t have any developments yet, but we will.”
