“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.<br />“If she had a tough day,” he said, “I’d always try to make her laugh.”<br />Mr. Hughes would fly to stops on the campaign trail to spend sometimes just a few hours with her.<br />In low moments, she would wonder, “What’s wrong with me?”<br />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.”<br />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,<br />because he had received the stamp of approval of her best friend, Laura Nagle.<br />Peter Alexander, a national correspondent for NBC News and one of Ms. Welker’s best friends, said<br />that before she met Mr. Hughes, between live shots for the “Today” show, Ms. Welker often vented about bad dates and relationships.<br />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.
