Dana Perino says the most important chapter in her personal life started when she and Peter McMahon were the final passengers to board an airplane. They have now been married for 28 years, a detail that gives her long-running Fox TV presence a more grounded origin story than the usual industry backstory.
Perino also said, “The dating scene in Washington is dismal.” She described McMahon as someone who “knew history” and added, “He was brilliant. Exciting.” Those lines do the work of the story: they turn a chance travel encounter into a durable partnership, not a one-off anecdote.
Wyoming to Washington
Perino said she was born in Wyoming, attended the University of Southern Colorado, and worked as a waitress before her TV career took shape. She also hosted the campus TV show Capitol Journal, a step that fits her later move into Washington media and political coverage.
As a child, she read the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News. That habit helps explain why she later described herself as “just a big reader who lived on a ranch and worried about the future,” a line that reads less like branding than a straight answer about where she came from.
Marine One and Fox TV
Perino said, “I was nervous. I figured if I go to Washington, I will never work in television.” The line carries real friction: she expected Washington to pull her away from TV, but the path eventually led to Fox and a career as a Fox TV personality instead.
She also said, “My sister told me, ‘You can do anything you want to do. Figure it out.’” That advice sits behind the career shift, and so does the practical part of the story: after a Marine One ride led to meeting then-President George Bush, she later returned to Washington to work after her DC friends in the Justice Department asked her back.
One year in Great Britain
Perino and McMahon spent one year living in his Great Britain birthplace before she said they moved because she was bored. After 9/11, they were in San Diego, and McMahon drove cross country with their dog to be with her. That kind of movement is ordinary on paper, but it shows how their marriage stayed operational across jobs, places, and timing.
Perino summed up the relationship in a simple routine: “We go out one night a week.” She also said, “Worried would I meet somebody.” The answer turned out to be yes, and the airplane meeting has now lasted long enough to become part of the public record around her career. For readers following Perino’s profile, the useful takeaway is not romance trivia; it is that a brief encounter preceded 28 years of marriage, and that the same person who expected Washington to end her TV hopes ended up building a visible career there anyway. Dana Perino previews Katie Zacharia's first press briefing fits that same arc of Washington, media, and timing.
