DALLAS — Shortly after he tried to reassure this city at a news conference that he did not put himself at risk of Ebola by coming into contact with the quarantined family of the nation’s first Ebola victim last week, Judge Clay Jenkins had a smaller audience to convince.

His neighbors. And his wife.

Hours after driving the quarantined family from their potentially contaminated apartment to their new temporary home on Oct. 3, Mr. Jenkins, 50, pulled up about 10 p.m. to the house in the upscale Highland Park area where he lives with his wife and 8-year-old daughter. His wife greeted him at the door of the vehicle. She learned that he had escorted the family by watching it live on television. Soon his neighbors across the street came by to express their own concerns.

“Everything is a learning curve,” said Mr. Jenkins, the county’s chief executive and its director of homeland security and emergency management. “Marriage is a learning curve. I learned quite a bit when I got home that night. My wife is at the door of that S.U.V. like J. J. Watt” — defensive end for the Houston Texans football team — “and she is explaining to me that this is a marriage and we communicate with each other.”