Kelly Rowland recalls giving Jenna Bush Hager a pager at the White House

On Jan. 20, 2001, George W. Bush was inaugurated as the 43rd president of the United States — but the real celebration kicked off the night before that for his daughter, TODAY’s Jenna Bush Hager.

That’s when she had the opportunity to see the biggest girl group of the day, Destiny’s Child, as they played at the “America’s Youth Inaugural Concert” at the MCI Center in Washington.

And once she and her family settled into the White House, Jenna got a face-to-face meeting with the band’s members, including Kelly Rowland. She recalled one fun part of that meeting during Rowland's recent visit to TODAY with Hoda & Jenna, the moment the singer presented the then-president's daughter with a pager.

"Girl, I loved it!" Jenna said of the gift. "I thought we could have texted. It wasn’t even texting ... beeped?"

Talk of the now outdated technology really took Rowland back.

"Wow, we are aging ourselves," she said. "‘Girl, let me beep you!’ ‘I’ll beep you back, girl!’ It was totally that, though."

But maybe pagers — or beepers as they were better known back in the day — aren’t that outdated after all, because after Rowland learned that Jenna had lost hers many years ago, she presented both her and Hoda Kotb with new ones.

"Thank you!" a surprised Jenna replied.

"They were the coolest things," Rowland said of the telecommunication devices. "We had them in red and blue and a black one."

And at one time, they were just as essential as cellphones are today.

"The thing is, that’s the only way we communicated," Jenna added. "Nobody had phones."

When asked if the newly gifted pagers actually work, Rowland shook her head with uncertainty. But if they do, here's hoping they get back to beeping each other soon.Related video:

This article was originally published on TODAY.com