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Vows

By BROOKE LEA FOSTER

Working as a television reporter covering the White House isn’t conducive to dating — the hours are long, the schedule unpredictable — and Kristen Welker’s love life was suffering.

Ms. Welker, an NBC News correspondent, recalled a point in her late 30s when most of her friends were having babies, and she was having trouble meeting the right guy. 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.

Ms. Welker, now 40, was in Philadelphia visiting her parents, and with her overnight bag in tow, she caught a cab to a restaurant in Center City. Waiting for her outside in a blazer was Mr. Hughes, now 44. “It was just about the most chivalrous thing a man can do,” Ms. Welker remembered thinking. She was also relieved that she had ditched her jeans (a friend had advised her to wear them on the theory that they would be less intimidating) and, trusting her fashion instincts, put on a skirt.

“When she got out of the car, I immediately felt like I was out of my league,” he said.

Ms. Welker was impeccably put together: her clothes, her makeup, her hair. He had been told she was on television news, but Mr. Hughes, who was accustomed to getting his news elsewhere, had never seen her.

He had a simple but effective plan to win her over.

“I remember thinking to myself,” he said, “‘If I can just make her laugh, maybe I’ll have a chance.’”

With nerves and small talk propelling them into the restaurant, toward the maître d’, the cabdriver followed them, telling Ms. Welker that she had not paid him. “I was so embarrassed,” she said. Mr. Hughes relaxed after that; the mistake made her seem more approachable.

The conversation flowed easily, and he got plenty of laughs. 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. Ms. Welker was scheduled that week to be a guest on the show. Mr. Hughes was in awe when he heard this.

“Suddenly, I was so cool to him,” Ms. Welker said with a laugh. They talked for so long that she had to catch one of the last trains that night back to Washington.

She nearly missed their second date. Mr. Hughes traveled to Washington so that they could have dinner, but Ms. Welker got caught up at work, thanks to breaking news, which, on her job, was to be expected.

Set to leave for Asia the next morning to cover a trip by President Barack Obama, Ms. Welker hadn’t packed, was feeling exhausted and was close to calling off the date. “I remember thinking, ‘I’ve canceled too many dates,’” she said. “‘I need to go.’”

She arrived at the restaurant two and a half hours late, but Mr. Hughes was patient. They talked about life and work, hobbies and family. At the end of the date, he handed her an envelope. “I made you something,” he said.

Inside, she found a crossword puzzle of presidential trivia, with clever handwritten clues he had written himself. (He had put it together while waiting for her.)

“That’s the moment he got me,” she said. “As a White House correspondent, it was so touching, and it marked him different than anyone else I ever dated.”

Ms. Welker was drawn to Mr. Hughes’s intellect; she had dated plenty of smart men, but Mr. Hughes valued her work in a way no one had before. “He allowed me to be me,” she said. “And he’s incredibly calm, while I’m typically talking 100 miles a minute.”

Within weeks, their chemistry had become apparent to those around them. 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.

After she met Mr. Hughes, something changed. “Suddenly, she didn’t have anything to bounce off me,” Mr. Alexander said.

The couple’s romance was tested six months after their first meeting, when Ms. Welker left to cover the presidential campaign. Often she would travel with candidates all night long.

Every night, she and Mr. Hughes promised to talk — what she called her “end-of-the-night call.” Sometimes she couldn’t dial him until after midnight, but he always waited up, and he stuck with the approach he used on their first date. “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. When a snowstorm caused flights into New Hampshire to be canceled, he boarded the Amtrak to Boston, then drove the rest of the way in a rental car. Since Ms. Welker had a cold, they snuggled in her hotel room and watched movies. “We were head over heels for each other,” he said. “But it was tough. We never knew where she was going to be.”

Proposing was particularly challenging for Mr. Hughes. For one, with Ms. Welker out covering the campaign, it was hard to find a time when they would both be in Washington. One day, she called him to say that she was going to be in town for 24 hours. “It’s probably not worth you coming down,” she said.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

One night before a date last June, they went to a real estate open house in Washington’s Shaw neighborhood. Mr. Hughes had been planning to move to the Washington area so that they could live together, and they had been house hunting. Typically, Mr. Hughes was the kind of home buyer who pulls back shower curtains and opens all the closets. But on this night, he was distracted, checking for rain clouds.

He told the cabdriver that he would direct him to the restaurant rather than offering an address, because he wanted their destination to be a surprise. Several turns later, they were at the Lincoln Memorial.

He led her to the memorial steps that overlook the Potomac River, an area where they had gone on runs. “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.

He took her hands. “I couldn’t imagine not being with you the rest of my life,” he told her. “Would you give me the honor of marrying me?”

Ms. Welker started to scream before he had finished: “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Mr. Hughes wiped away tears. A runner stopped to snap a photo of them, shyly approaching them a few minutes later to share the pictures.

Planning a wedding, something Ms. Welker had always dreamed about, came during one of the most turbulent election campaigns. The couple’s wedding planner, Ronnie Anderson, began editing the number of choices she sent Ms. Welker, knowing that she wouldn’t have much time to make selections. Ms. Welker found her dress after one shopping trip with her mother and Mr. Hughes’s mother, selecting a strapless ivory Vera Wang gown with a delicate handmade lace overlay and wide sash and bow in the back.

The wedding took place on March 4 at the Hyatt at the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia, a block away from their first date. Two boys serving as ushers handed out wedding programs at the door leading to the ceremony. Inside was a copy of the presidential crossword puzzle Mr. Hughes had made.

In the hotel’s Rose Garden room on the 19th floor, Ms. Welker walked down an aisle scattered with pink rose petals with her father, Harvey Welker, to Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

At the altar, tucked under a canopy of lush interwoven white orchids, she leaned into the groom for a kiss. “Not yet,” the reverend scolded. And when Ms. Welker pulled away, guests enjoyed a hearty laugh. Beaming throughout the ceremony, she couldn’t help but occasionally pivot toward the guests to smile, crinkle her nose or wink.

When they entered the grand ballroom as husband and wife, the couple moved around the dance floor, giving high-fives to friends and relatives.

A who’s who of NBC News producers and on-air talent attended, including Mr. Alexander, Kelly O’Donnell, Chuck Todd, Pete Williams and Andrea Mitchell.

A favorite topic among the guests was how happy the bride looked. It seemed that love, though tardy, had found its mark.

“I hope my story inspires people to keep an open mind,” Ms. Welker said, “and never give up hope that they’ll meet someone.”