In the summer of 1988, a graduate of Harvard Law School told her mother she was going to concentrate on her law career and not worry about dating. She was 25 and had just finished her first year as an associate at Sidley & Austin, a corporate law firm in her home town of Chicago.
Not long after, the firm assigned her to mentor a 27-year-old prodigy also from Harvard Law School hired by Sidley as a summer associate. She was assigned to 'teach him the ropes.' His name struck her as odd, as did the fact that he had grown up in Hawaii. She assumed he would be "strange and overly intellectual" and that she would almost certainly dislike him.
She still remembers her early impressions when he showed up in her office. "He had no money; he was really broke. He wasn't ever going to try to impress me with things. His wardrobe was kind of cruddy . . . His first car had so much rust that there was a rusted hole in the passenger door. You could see the ground when you were driving. He loved that car. It would shake ferociously when it would start up. I thought, 'This brother is not interested in ever making a dime."
All the same, she liked him well enough to take him home to meet her family. Her older brother, who knew about her impossibly high standards when it came to men thought this too would end the same way the others had ended. He knew her habits. "She would meet guys and go out on a couple of dates, and that would be it.”
So when he came over for dinner, the whole family felt sorry for him, assuming he wouldn't be around for long. "He was very, very low-key," her brother said. "I loved the way he talked about his family because it was the way we talked about our family. I was thinking: 'Nice guy. Too bad he won't last.'
But he did last. Barack Obama will never forget the first time he saw Michelle Robinson. “I remember being struck by how tall and beautiful she was,” he recalls. But whenever he asked her out she refused. “I'm your adviser,” she said. “It's not appropriate.” When Barack offered to quit his job if it would make her go out with him, she finally agreed. For their first date, they saw Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and ate ice cream afterwards. When she came home that night Michelle realized her life had changed forever. “We clicked right away...by the end of the date it was over...I was sold,” she recalled later.
Before Michelle, Barack had brought only one woman to Hawaii to meet his family, according to his younger half-sister, Maya Soetoro. He in turn was Michelle’s first serious boyfriend, according to Craig Robinson, Michelle’s brother: none of the others had met her standards.
During their three-year courtship, the couple shared thrilling moments, like when Barack became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. But there were crushing ones too. In early 1991, Fraser Robinson, Michelle’s father, who was employed by the city to tend boilers at a water treatment plant, came down with what seemed to be the flu. Just a few days later, he was brain-dead, and his family had to decide whether to end life support. Barack was in the middle of classes, with no money to speak of, but he flew to Chicago to be with Michelle, anyway.
After he went back to Harvard, the couple had a long-distance romance. This was when Michelle began to pressure Barack saying they should get married. But Barack put her off, arguing that marriage was a meaningless institution and that the only thing that mattered was how they felt about each other. Michelle, whose parents had been married for over 30 years, wasn't convinced.
Then, one night in 1991, he took her to Gordon, an expensive Chicago restaurant, and she started to press him again. He went into his usual tirade against marriage, a speech that went on until they ordered dessert. When it came, the plate had a box on it, and in the box was an engagement ring. "That kind of shuts you up, doesn't it?" he had asked her with a twinkle in his eyes. Michelle confesses she doesn't remember what the dessert was, or whether she ate it. She says, "I was so shocked and a little embarrassed because he did sort of shut me up."
On October 3, 1992, Michelle and Barack said "I do" at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. The bride's brother walked her down the aisle, while the groom's brother served as best man. Michelle looked the perfect 90s bride in an off-the-shoulder long sleeved gown, puffy veil, and statement drop pearl earrings. A reception was held at the South Shore Cultural Center where Michelle chose Steve Wonder's "You and I" for their first dance as husband and wife.
Of their vows, Michelle says, “Barack didn’t pledge riches, only a life that would be interesting.” Looking back into the past, today she says, “On that promise he delivered.”
- Aditha
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