Even Bill Clinton gets excited about Texts From Hillary! Accepting the Father of the Year Award from the National Father's Day Committee at a New York City luncheon benefiting Save the Children on Tuesday, June 11, the former President of the United States joked that he had gotten a short, congratulatory message from his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, earlier that day.
"I [received] a text message from Hillary saying, 'Congratulations. I think you deserve this,'" Parade magazine quoted him as saying in his speech. "In our family, that's a very big deal."
Clinton, 66, was presented with the award by his daughter, 33-year-old Chelsea Clinton, who gushed that her famous father had "set the bar very high" for her husband, Marc Mezvinsky. "I don't need an award to tell me he's the best [dad] that I ever could have hoped for," she reportedly said. "But I'm grateful he's getting the recognition that I, of course, his unapologetically biased daughter, think he's always deserved."
"Of all the reasons that I'm proud of my father, I'm most proud that he's my dad and that he's always been there for me," she added. "He has always provided me a safe place to land and a hard place from which to launch."
The former Commander-in-Chief, for his part, was similarly effusive while accepting the honor, telling the crowd that although there are "a million people who are equally or more deserving" of the Father of the Year title, there's no one to whom it would mean more. "You could never have picked anyone happier," Parade quoted him as saying, "because seeing my daughter still makes me happier than anything else in the world."
