Facts about Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama Biography
Michelle Obama is the wife of former U.S. president Barack Obama and was First Lady of the United States from 2009-2017. She is also a lawyer and a former Chicago city administrator and community outreach worker.
Reared in a blue-collar home on Chicago’s South Side, Michelle Robinson was an associate at a law firm when she met Barack Obama; he was a summer intern and she was assigned to advise him. She worked in the offices of Chicago’s mayor and its planning commission, headed a career-training program for young adults and directed community affairs for the University of Chicago and its medical center.
She caught the eye of a national audience at her husband’s side after he delivered a high-profile speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 and then was elected that year to the U.S. Senate. In 2007 she scaled back her own professional work to attend to family and campaign obligations during Obama’s successful run for president.
Michelle Obama took her turn as a speaker on the opening night of the 2008 Democratic convention, and her husband was elected president on November 4, 2008. She became First Lady with his inauguration on January 20, 2009, becoming the first Black First Lady in the country’s history. She then received a second four-year “term” as First Lady when Barack Obama was re-elected on November 6, 2012. She was succeeded as First Lady by Melania Trump, wife of Republican President-elect Donald Trump, on January 20, 2017.
Extra credit
Michelle Obama is a 1985 graduate of Princeton University. Her brother, Craig Robinson, class of 1983, was a basketball star there and went on to coach at Brown University and Oregon State University… Although she’s younger than Barack Obama, Michelle Obama graduated from Harvard Law School first, in 1988. She didn’t cross paths there with her future husband, who graduated in 1991… The Obamas were married in 1992 and have two daughters: Malia (born 1998) and Natasha (called Sasha, born 2001).