You're not misreading it. The reporter mentions she talked to a friend of Clinton's at a pizza party and the friend said something about liking Clinton's hair long.

You might be reading too much into it, but you're not misreading it.

The context is the reporter has been travelling and following Clinton around for a big profile piece in the Wall Street journal and that is a transcript of an interview, so it's not edited and doesn't have transitional sentences, etc. The woman is almost definitely Clinton's friend Betsy Ebeling who's known Clinton since childhood.

Where did this come from? When was it released?