The crucial backing the MBTA's Green Line Extension project got this week from the feds may have been helped by one state employee's personal pitch to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

It helps, of course, that the employee was Gov. Charlie Baker.

Sitting down at the National Governors Association dinner back in February, Baker's seat placement that night next to first daughter Ivanka Trump earned a lot of headlines the next morning. But on the other side of him, he said, was Chao, who oversees the Federal Transit Administration that this week approved the Baker administration's $2.3 billion budget for the long-stalled Green Line plans.

“I spent half the night talking to Secretary Chao about the Green Line Extension project,” Baker said during an appearance on Boston Herald Radio's "Morning Meeting" show today. “I'm very excited about that opportunity. It's a terrific infrastructure project, and the fact the feds will be a big co-sponsor indicates that they believe it's a great project, too.”

The FTA's green light is key to ensuring the state gets $1 billion in federal funding the project, which will run 4.7 miles of track through Somerville and Medford, adding seven new stations along the way.

How much convincing Baker ultimately had to do that night may have been minimal. The Trump administration had previously highlighted the project, along with dozens of others, and Baker has said that it was a priority project for the feds.

State official had stalled the project amid what they say were exploding costs before ultimately paring down plans, and the price tag, last year.

“It was running out of control financially,” Baker said. “I think the revised version, they and we both agree, is much more financially appropriate.”

But Baker's highly publicized spot next to Ivanka Trump apparently also proved fortuitous. Earlier this month, Baker was tapped for a White House commission to study how to rein in the country's heroin and opioid crisis, a position Baker says he'll use to push local reforms nationally.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Baker ally, is heading the commission and was the one who called Baker asking him to serve on it. But Baker also pointed to his discussion with Ivanka Trump as a likely factor for him being picked.

“She was really interested in the issue,” he said. “I have to believe in retrospect that that conversation and that dialogue probably also helped.”