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Inside the marriage of Barack and Michelle Obama, who met at work and kissed outside an ice cream store on their first date
Inside the marriage of Barack and Michelle Obama, who met at work and kissed outside an ice cream store on their first date
Áine CainMar 17, 2018, 19:18 IST
Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
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• Barack Obama first met his future wife Michelle at work in 1989.
• The former First Couple went on a date that same year, and subsequently were married in 1991.
• The Obamas have spoken at length about how they made their marriage work, despite the pressures of the campaign trail and the White House.
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Barack Obama reportedly knows how to sweep a girl off her feet.
The future president's first date with his wife Michelle began at the Art Institute of Chicago, where they grabbed lunch. It didn't start auspiciously.
Michelle was Obama's mentor at the law firm Sidley Austin LLP, and was therefore reluctant to go out with him. According to David Mendell's "Obama: From Promise to Power," the future First Lady also thought Obama sounded "too good to be true" at first. She was also unimpressed when he showed up to the date in a "bad sport jacket" with a "cigarette dangling from his mouth."
"I thought: 'Oh, here you go. Here's this good-looking, smooth-talking guy. I've been down this road before,'" she told Mendell, according to the Washington Post.
But ultimately, Barack won her over. They went out walking, and later caught a screening of Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing," the Telegraph reported.
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The date went well by all accounts, and couple reportedly had their first kiss outside a Baskin-Robbins at 53rd and South Dorchester in Chicago. The spot is now marked by a plaque commemorating the event, according to Atlas Obscura.
Here's a look inside the 25-year marriage of the former First Couple:
Michelle, then 25, became 28-year-old Barack's mentor at Sidley Austin LLP in 1989. Michelle worried that it would be too "tacky" to date the new summer associate.
But ultimately, Barack won her over. The couple's first romantic excursion inspired the 2016 film "Southside with You." "We clicked right away… by the end of the date, it was over… I was sold," Michelle said, according to Brides.com.
In 1991, Barack passed the bar exam, and took Michelle out to dinner at the now-shuttered Gordon's restaurant to celebrate. It was there he proposed to her.
A year later, on October 3, 1992, the pair married at Chicago's Trinity Church of Christ. Michelle — a major Stevie Wonder fan — picked the song "You and I" for their first dance. The newlyweds spent their honeymoon cruising along California's coast.
The Obamas' two daughters, Malia and Sasha, were born in 1998 and 2001. In his book "The Audacity of Hope," Barack wrote of parenting baby Malia with Michelle, "...checking the crib to make sure she was breathing, coaxing smiles from her, singing her songs, and taking so many pictures that we started to wonder if we were damaging her eyes."
As the Obamas' public profiles soared due to Barack's political career, Michelle told the Washington Post that she worried the impact the scrutiny was having on their daughters.
After Barack became president, Michelle recalled sending them off to their DC elementary school with Secret Service agents, and thinking, "What on Earth am I doing to these babies?"
The Obamas also had to work through "difficult times" in Illinois, as Barack "spent long days away from home playing state politics," the Guardian reported.
As a result, in some ways, the Obamas' marriage and family life became less hectic in the White House compared to the "years of tough campaigning," the Guardian reported.
"This is the first time in a long time in our marriage that we've lived seven days a week in the same household with the same schedule, with the same set of rituals," Michelle told the New York Times in 2009.
"Not the big, splashy stuff," Michelle said, according to Glamour. "It's just the little day-to-day sharing and routines and rituals that we still have."
In an interview with Extra, Michelle said friendship was just as crucial as love in any marriage. "The love, that's always there," she said. "But it's the friendship that gets you through the tough parts."
Michelle has also said that it helped that the family doesn't take themselves "too seriously." In an Entertainment Tonight segment, the then-First Couple agreed that Michelle was funnier, and Barack told more bad jokes.
Since Obama's presidential term ended, the couple has spent time campaigning for the non-profit Obama Foundation, which supports a scholarship program and is overseeing the creation of his presidential library.
But whether they're campaigning for the presidency or unwinding together, the Obamas always stick to the same philosophy on marriage. "It has to be a true partnership, and you have to really, really like and respect the person you're married to because it is a hard road," Michelle said.
