'Morning Joe' hosts Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski are engaged
Thanks to their long, odd hours, it's quite common for journalists to date and marry co-workers or colleagues.
The latest example: Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, whose engagement was confirmed on Thursday's show, following a report from the New York Post's Page Six.
Regular panelist Harold Ford Jr. offered his congratulations at the top of Thursday's show. Brzezinski thanked him before fellow co-host Willie Geist joked that Ford was congratulating the pair on the show's ratings.
Scarborough and Brzezinski have been an onscreen team for 10 years. Morning Joe originally premiered in April 2007 following the cancellation of Imus in the Morning.
The former Florida Congressman, now 54, left the House of Representatives partway through his fourth term in 2001. He then spent a couple of years practicing law before joining NBC News in 2003. Brzezinski has worked in journalism since shortly after graduating from college and has also reported for ABC and CBS.
Both were married to other people for much of the show's tenure.
Scarborough has been married twice previously, first to Melanie Hinton from 1986 to 1999 and then to former Congressional staffer Susan Warren from 2001 to 2013. He has four children, two from each marriage. Brzezinski, the daughter of Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, was married to James Hoffer, a fellow TV journalist, from 1993 to 2016. They have two children together.
Both maintain they didn't act on their feelings for each other until after their previous marriages ended.
“Everyone talks about how there was always something there,” Brzezinski told VanityFair in a story published Thursday. “Over the past year and a half, I realized I had to face these feelings and that it was time to stop putting them in a box. It was not an easy process and it was not an easy set of decisions for either of us. It was something I couldn’t deny anymore.”
She said Scarborough's marriage proposal came during a trip to the Antibes in honor of her 50th birthday. During a walk by the Mediterranean, he feigned being winded and asked to take a break. That's when he busted out the oval-shaped diamond ring set in platinum.
“When I saw him on one knee, I started laughing nervously, almost hysterically,” Brzezinski said. “And then he asked, and I said, ‘Absolutely.’ ”
For his part, Scarborough said he thought long and hard about attempting marriage for a third time.
“It’s the one part of my life that unfortunately, I haven’t gotten right in the past,” Scarborough told Vanity Fair. “I thought after the last time that I would never, ever do this again in a million years,” he said. “Then it occurred to me that with us working together and being live on the air every day for three hours that we were forced, no matter what disagreements we had, what misunderstandings we had, to work through it and get right with each other by 5:59 A.M.”
A friend confirmed that that was "extraordinary training on getting through difficult times together," and something that could only strengthen their marriage.
They haven't moved in together yet and are still figuring out how to join their two households. Nor have they made any major decisions about their nuptials, though she revealed that during their New Year's visit to Mar-a-Lago, both Jared Kushner and his father-in-law volunteered to marry them.
And while the Morning Joe team's relations with the Trump administration may have thawed a little, things haven't improved quite that much.
"No, no, no, no, no," came Brzezinski response when Vanity Fair asked if they'd actually consider it.
Contributing: Associated Press