“I wanted to ask her outside in a place you could walk by years later and tell your kids that this was the spot we got engaged,” Mr. Hughes said.
“If she had a tough day,” he said, “I’d always try to make her laugh.”
Mr. Hughes would fly to stops on the campaign trail to spend sometimes just a few hours with her.
In low moments, she would wonder, “What’s wrong with me?”
But mostly she had talked herself into a certain peace about her inability to find love, reminding herself, “This happens for everyone else, but it may not happen for me.”
Still, in October 2014, when mutual friends set her up on a date with John Hughes, a marketing director at Merck in Philadelphia, she was optimistic, in part,
because he had received the stamp of approval of her best friend, Laura Nagle.
Peter Alexander, a national correspondent for NBC News and one of Ms. Welker’s best friends, said
that before she met Mr. Hughes, between live shots for the “Today” show, Ms. Welker often vented about bad dates and relationships.
When Ms. Welker asked him where he got his news, Mr. Hughes said he enjoyed listening to “On Point” by Tom Ashbrook, an in-depth news podcast on NPR.