The love story of Barack and Michelle Obama is not what you thought you are, it's even better

If behind every big man there is an even bigger woman, what kind of superlative should be reserved for Michelle obama?

Well, the former first lady might beg you to go down a notch, to start.

Start of a book tour across the country last week to support his new memoir, To becomeObama said that she and her 26-year-old husband, former president Barack ObamaAre they ultimately just a few humans doing their best – which probably shocked the millions who placed them on a base, not only as individuals, but as a unit, the end of things and everything that marriage should look like.

Or at least as the best damn couple to ever live in the White House.

They may still deserve that title, but Michelle, who in To become shared more personal details than ever since she's in public life – actually and deliberately broke the myth behind the man and woman who marked history as the first Afro president American and first lady of the United States, and had no choice but to understand how to meet an unprecedented expectation in the light of the most demanding projectors in the world.

"I know too many young couples struggling and thinking in one way or another, there is something wrong with them," said Obama. Hello Americaof Robin Roberts. "I want them to know that Michelle and Barack Obama, who have a phenomenal marriage and who love each other, we are working on our marriage and we are getting help for our marriage when we need it. . "

His written memories span his entire life, from infancy to law school, to the fact that it was in 2017 to leave the keys of the castle in the hands of Donald and Melania Trump(who, says Michelle, has do not asked him for advice, although the line remains open). But it is the intimate look at his family life that has proved particularly relevant to many.

Among the most personal revelations: After Michelle suffered a miscarriage, which she describes in the book as a "lonely, painful and demoralizing experience" for her, the Obamas proceeded with an IVF to help them conceive their two daughters, Malia Obama, Now 20 and Sasha Obama17. And the Obama did the consultation – because Michelle hoped the therapist could "fix" her husband.

"I wanted to get her to have someone else tell her," Do together, "" she revealed at a sold-out meeting with Oprah Winfrey at the United Center in Chicago, marking the launch of his reading tour on Tuesday.

"What I've learned about myself," concluded Obama, "is that it's not my partner's job to make me happy – we have to make ourselves happy." There is a part of me that was waiting for me, and I do not need him to do it, I needed it. I had arguments not for that it be done, but for it to do it. "

Let's just say that nothing would have been done and that the story might not have been made, except for some twists and turns. Some of them played in the movie based on real events Southside with you, which tells the first meeting of the Obamas in 1989 – and others do not exactly improve the awkward story of meeting pretty flowers in a fairy tale.

Barack Obama, a student at Harvard Law School, or Barry, as friends called him, began working as a summer associate at the Chicago Sidley & Austin law firm. Upon his arrival, he was asked to register with Michelle Robinson, 25, of the Harvard Law School in 1988.

And through several accounts, including his own, he was immediately hit.

"I had never taken the train back to downtown, it was raining that day," Barack Obama said in a video message broadcast during Oprah's cat. "I was not fully equipped with an umbrella." When I get back into Michelle's office, I'm not just late, I'm also a little bit wet, so we do not know if I'm not sure. made the best impression. "

Michelle had been in charge of coaching the new recruit – "the luckiest break of my life," Senator Barack Obama recalls in an article published in 2007 by: O Magazine. She had supposed, judging by her unusual name and by all the hype she had heard, that he would be "strange and excessively intellectual."

"I remember being struck by its size and beauty," he says in O. "I have learned since I was pleasantly surprised to find that my nose and ears were not as huge as the picture I had submitted for the corporate directory. "

"It seemed too good to be true," says Michelle in the biography of David Mendell, 2009 Obama: from the promise to power. "I had frequented a lot of brothers who had that kind of reputation, so I figured he was one of those adorable brothers who could talk frankly and impress people, so we had lunch, and he had that bad sports jacket and that cigarette, dangling from his mouth and I thought, "Oh, there you go. Here is this beautiful boy who speaks well. I've already taken this path. "

"Later, I was shocked to find out that he could really communicate with people and that he had depth for him." He turned out to be an individual. elite endowed with strong moral values. "

But it was the first lady who was talking at that time.

Michelle Robinson had told her mother, Marian Robinsonthat she was going to focus on her career and put dating on the back burner. In addition, she feared that the only two black partners in the company meeting would look "pretty sticky," she told Mendell. (There were other black lawyers in the firm, including a partner, Newton Minow, Sidley Austin's associate, told the Washington Post MagazineLiz Mundy for her book 2008 Michelle: a biographybut he could see how Michelle could have thought otherwise.)

She even tried to prepare Barack with a friend, but that did not interest her.

"She was kind enough to take me to a few parties and never commented on my mismatched and decidedly unattractive wardrobe," he wrote. "I asked her out, she refused, I did not stop asking, she did not stop refusing," saying it was inappropriate.

Finally, she remembered agreeing to go get some ice cream. There is now a plaque commemorating this memorable trip to the Baskin-Robbins in Dorchester and East 53rd Street. He reads, quoting Barack in O: On our first date, I offered him the best ice cream that Baskin-Robbins had to offer, with our dinner table serving as a sidewalk. I kissed her and it had a taste of chocolate. "

But really, there could be plaques all over the city.

In Southside with youMichelle's enthusiastic suitor took her to an old yellow Datsun – a car that the future president was really driving – after having invited her to a meeting at which, as a community organizer, he had to speak. .

They go first to the Art Institute of Chicago to watch an exhibition, they have sandwiches, then she sees him talking (swoon, of course), and then they look Spike Leeof Do the right thing (where they meet a colleague and his wife) and then they have ice and their first kiss.

"It was a nice date, actually," Michelle said in promotional videos from the White House decades later. "We spent the whole day together, he showed me all the facets of his character, he showed his cultural side, then we had a nice and long walk on Michigan Avenue."

It was Newton Minow and his wife who saw young Barack and Michelle at the movies that night.

"I think they were a little embarrassed," he told Mundy.

"She had all these little facts about her," said Mary Carragher, who also worked at Sidley Austin. She was one of the many people who assumed that Michelle was as in love with Barack as he was. "She was just learning about him and getting to know him, and she seemed to be very engaged with him … she was just a little surprised by him."

That being said, Carragher added that Michelle "did not fall on him, she was very cool."

"As soon as I allowed myself to feel anything for Barack," admits Michelle in To become"Feelings rushed – an explosion of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder."

But Michelle's brother, university basketball coach Craig Robinson, remembers being wrong for Barack when his sister brought him home for the first time for dinner, thinking he would have left after a few meetings, like those who had come before.

"He was very, very discreet," Craig said. Chicago Sun-Times. "I loved the way he talked about his family because that was the way we talked about our family." I thought, "It's a nice guy. Too bad it does not last. "

Barack had to return to Harvard at the end of the summer, but they kept their relationship at bay.

"Before meeting Michelle, I was too immature to hold such an event together," said Obama to Mendell, who noted that prior to Harvard, when he was working in Chicago as a "nightmare". community organizer, the future president had a serious girlfriend and a cat, but they had long since separated amiably.

Which was pretty much true – though, as it tends to be, it was not so simple.

In his own written memoirs before becoming president, Obama spoke of a "squeeze" of girlfriends he had before meeting Michelle.

According to the biography of David Maraniss in 2012 Barack Obama: the storyGenevieve Cook, a woman he met in 1983 in New York after graduating from Columbia, was at the time "the deepest love relationship of his young life". That being said, when she said "I like you", he said "thank you".

Cook remembered his famous ex-boyfriend as a "virtuous daily jogger" and a disciplined writer. In his Dreams of my fatherObama remembered talking about Genevieve to his Kenyan sister, Auma, "I pushed him back.We started to fight.We started thinking about the future, and our world was warm and warm. " In May 1984, they separated, after which Obama moved to Chicago.

In the spring of 1985, 25-year-old Barack Obama met Sheila Miyoshi Jager, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, named in Maraniss's book "The Anthropologist of Chicago," thanks to his Mutual friends. "This relationship ended much like that with Genevieve, when Obama was ready to make his next career move," wrote Maraniss.

Again, not so simple.

According to David Garrow Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, proposed last year, Obama proposed to Jager in 1986.

First, they moved together in October 1986 to a $ 450 monthly apartment on South Harper Avenue.

"Very nice lady, as busy as me and with such a temperament," wrote Obama to a friend, by Garrow. "It's not that there's no tension, I'm not really used to having another person underfoot all the time, and there are times when loneliness I do miss the single life, but the winter is approaching and it is nice to have someone to go home after a night shift, compromises, compromises. "

A few months later, "in the winter of 86, when we visited my parents, he asked me to marry him," recalls Jager.

Influenced by her parents, her mother loved Barack but found her too young; his father did not think that the young man was worthy, she says "not yet".

They stayed together for almost two years.

In early 1987, Jager told Garrow that she had seen her boyfriend become "somebody rather extraordinary" after starting, for her, "quite ordinary". At the time, "he already had the intention of becoming president". At the same time, Jager (who is half white and half Japanese) said that he was becoming "dark, calm, distant – and only then, as I recall, did he begin to speak of entry into politics and race has become a big issue between us ".

Still, Obama has invited Jager to accompany him to see his family in Hawaii at Christmas. In early 1988, however, Jager remembered to have realized that she could never marry Obama, that it would not match any of their aspirations. Barack left for Harvard this fall, but Sheila had already left their Chicago apartment after taking a look at the newspaper that he was holding under his bed.

They stayed in touch that first year, though.

Meanwhile, as has been observed over the years, Barack Obama did not fully believe in the institution of marriage, even when he had asked Jager to marry him.

When Michelle and he were dating a long distance, she informed him of his expectations and he said that getting married did not matter as long as they were together.

To paraphrase Michelle: Yeah, no.

In 1991, Obama proposed a fine dinner at Gordon's in Chicago. The box with the ring arrived with the dessert. "That sort of thing is shutting you down, is not it?" Michelle remembered telling him.

They were married on October 3, 1992 at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Malia was born in 1998 and Sasha in 2001.

Becoming parents was one of the life changes that motivated a trip to the council.

"The marriage proposal for us was one of those methods where we learned to express our differences," Michelle Obama told Robin Roberts last week. "I know too many young couples who are struggling and think that there is something wrong with them, and I want them to know that Michelle and Barack Obama, who have a phenomenal marriage and who If we love, we work on our marriage, and we get help with our marriage when we need it. "

Meanwhile, although Obama's presidential ambitions apparently seemed obvious to all the women with whom he came into contact in the 1980s, Michelle claimed she was unaware during their court.

His brother Craig, however, said Liz Mundy for her book 2008 Michelle: a biography that Barack told him very early at a party that he wanted to run for the US Senate and perhaps even for the presidency someday.

"He probably should have said, 'Do not tell Michelle!'," Michelle told Mundy in 2007. But Craig Robinson said Vanity Fair that his sister "knew what she was engaging in."

Obama was elected to the Senate of Illinois in 1996 and then to the US Senate in 2004.

"I have a job and I am the primary caregiver for two very bright little girls," said Michelle, then Executive Director of Community Affairs at the University of Chicago Hospital. New Yorker in 2004 during his campaign in the Senate. "It's crazy, it's not realistic."

Being a politician's wife was "difficult," she acknowledged. "And that's why Barack is such a grateful man."

Talk to Oprah Winfrey for O with her husband later that year, and also before the election, Michelle said, "I would like Barack to be my senator, I know this man, he is brilliant, he is decent, he is all you want. "

When asked about the role his family played in his life, Obama replied, "They are everything".

He said, "I love this woman, we had a hard time …" "There were a lot of them …" Michelle agreed. "

She told Winfrey: "The first people we do not want to disappoint are our kids.Barack is a great father.Even when he's away he calls every night.People will suck you, and they will not do not think about having two kids, he has to attend the children's ballets and their parent-teacher conferences, and he likes that. "

But it was a struggle. As she writes in To becomeWhen her husband was a senator and she was working full time to fight to create family time for Barack, Malia and Sasha, she finally had to stick to a bedtime routine and tell her spouse that it has come or that it is ". to fail to put children to bed, as simple as that.

"It was my focal point, my moment of self-arrest," she wrote. "As a mountaineer about to glide from an icy summit, I broke my ax into the ground."

Michelle was not particularly happy when her husband told her she wanted to run for president. But she went head-to-head in the campaign and was at his side – or across the country, at any time, mobilizing support – all the way through.

"My God, who can sit here and say, 'I'm ready to be president and first lady?'," She said, discussing her simultaneous reservations and her Full trust in her husband with the New York Times in 2007.

"I know that Barack is something special," Michelle said. "If I did not do it, I would not be here."

President Barack Obama was elected in 2008 on a wave of hope, optimism, and enthusiasm unprecedented for generations. And once the policy for which his wife had always scorned so much throughout his life began to wreak havoc, it is the marriage of the president who got the highest approval ratings.

Two terms and two years later, their lives – and the course of history – have changed forever. But at the end of the day, loving parents and dedicated spouses moved into the White House 10 years ago. Just a couple of best friends and partners who have experienced both the pinnacle of power and the life-giving trouble of starting from nothing, the most dizzying and miserable peaks, the agony of indecision and the satisfaction to know that you have succeeded choice.

"We meet again," said Michelle Obama People recently. "We have single dinners and pieces of time when there is only us – what we were when we started this thing: no kids, no ads, no nothing. Just us and our dreams."

Which is just how they started. Although they probably do not miss the yellow Datsun.