Wasn’t just The Verge. Road to VR AND UploadVr received direct confirmation as well.
Road to VR and UploadVR are two of the more larger, established VR news sources.
Each of these sites state that Valve confirmed to them (as in each individual site) the information.
Most likely what happened is each of these website wrote Valve and asked if they wanted to comment on the early store page, to which Valve probably sent the same reply to all 3.
Point of the matter is, each Website is claiming itself as a source, meaning they aren’t going off of The Verge’s article. They are just going off the direct correspondence they got from Valve.
Besides the May 1st reveal and preorder information, Valve’s correspondence is also where they announced the knuckles will be known as “Valve Index Controllers”.
This is 100% confirmed.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.roadtovr.com/valve-index-vr-headset-release-date/amp/