SHORTLY BEFORE OUR big day, Tim Russert called and said he wanted to talk to me. I couldn’t imagine why. We’d seen each other in the cafeteria, but we’d never had an actual conversation.
Although it would be another two years before Tim became a household face as host of Meet the Press, he was already a force at NBC. He’d just been made Washington bureau chief—he had a lot of power and could make things happen, like brokering Bryant and Jane’s meeting with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican for the TODAY show.
His sweet secretary, Barbara Fant, greeted me. She directed me to Tim’s spacious office, where I spied a bin of individually wrapped Twizzlers and resisted the urge to pluck one out.
“I have an opening at the Pentagon,” Tim said. “I’m looking for a deputy correspondent to work with Fred Francis. What do you think? Do you think you could do this?”
Holy shit, I thought.
“The Pentagon, wow,” I said. But I had to be honest. “I don’t really have a strong background in military affairs.”
“You can learn,” Tim said. “Fred will take you under his wing. I’ve watched you covering Marion Barry” （the DC mayor caught on tape smoking crack with a supposed lady friend in a downtown hotel）。 “You’re relentless.”
Tim told me he had already asked the WRC general manager for permission to offer me the job. “He said by all means, go ahead.”
That hurt. I couldn’t believe there was so little interest in keeping me.
Tim continued: “At first he wanted me to talk to Wendy Rieger”—a leggy looker at WRC and my complete opposite—“but I said no, I want Katie.”
I knew I liked this guy.
In no time we were talking turkey, figuring out logistics. I told him I was getting married in a couple of months and had planned a two-week honeymoon.
“We can wait,” Tim said, fixing me with his patented penetrating stare. “You’re ready for this.”
I wasn’t so sure. Then I remembered what George Watson told me when I’d sought his advice about becoming a reporter: “Whatever you do, don’t be typecast as the cute girl who does features.”
I thought about those words every time I did a story. And you can’t get more hard-news than the Pentagon.
When I reached the door, I turned around.
“I can do this,” I said.
OUR WEDDING WAS on June 10th at 2:00 p.m. at the Navy Chapel, right next door to the WRC/NBC building.
Something I hadn’t counted on: Jay wanted the Monahans’ family friend John Kelly—a Catholic deacon—to marry us. That meant I would need to be confirmed in a Christian church, something I had rejected in seventh grade.
I’d met with our local Presbyterian minister, Reverend Birdsall, at the drugstore, where he bought me a Coke and shared the benefits of a prayerful life. He pulled out a pamphlet with a diagram showing Jesus on a throne surrounded by symbols for parents, siblings, friends, and community. I just couldn’t accept the idea that Jesus was more important than my family and announced to my dad that I didn’t want to become a member of the church. But now, almost 20 years later, I was asking him to go through the confirmation process with me.
Together, we joined the National Presbyterian Church, which was on the other side of WRC. We were mesmerized by the minister’s sermons. Sharing a hymnal and reciting the Lord’s Prayer made me feel so close to my dad. I loved those mornings with him, not as father and daughter but as contemporaries, talking about faith and life.
I shelled out $1,100 for a wedding dress at the Bethesda boutique Claire Dratch: white silk with a shawl collar, a spill of tiny covered buttons down the back, and a train that hitched up to make a bustle. On my head, a lightly sequined pillbox hat with a pouf of tulle. The whole effect was more jaunty than elegant, which felt right. I carried a pretty bouquet of gardenias that my mom made. She had a side hustle doing floral arrangements with women we referred to as “the flower ladies,” providing companionship and a bit of spending money.
We had 230 guests. The ceremony was lovely, although not without drama: Just as Jay uttered those immortal words “I do,” a fire alarm went off in the chapel. Apparently, someone who worked there was smoking in the balcony.
“Did I give the wrong answer?” Jay ad-libbed.
As for the reception, neither of our families could afford a super-snazzy affair with a soup-to-nuts sit-down dinner. I’m remembering stuffed mushrooms, Swedish meatballs in chafing dishes, and strawberries you could dip in a vat of chocolate mousse. There was a ’40s-type swing band that kept taking smoking breaks at the most inopportune times, which ticked me off; Jay would say it was his first taste of me as “a pouter” （he’d picked the band, so I was mad at him too）。 Steve Doocy emceed. Long before he became the host of Fox and Friends, he was a benignly funny features guy at WRC. There’s a priceless photo of my mother near the end of the wedding looking anxiously at her wristwatch. Not because she hadn’t had fun but because she knew that if the band played on, she and my father paid on. Time to wrap it up.