{"id":1947,"date":"2022-12-21T14:07:36","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T14:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/strongermarriages\/?p=1947"},"modified":"2022-12-27T15:19:17","modified_gmt":"2022-12-27T15:19:17","slug":"michelle-obama-details-how-barack-obama-crushed-her-idea-of-romance-on-her-first-hawaii-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/strongermarriages\/2022\/12\/michelle-obama-details-how-barack-obama-crushed-her-idea-of-romance-on-her-first-hawaii-visit.html","title":{"rendered":"Michelle Obama Details How Barack Obama Crushed Her Idea of Romance on Her First Hawaii Visit"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_1962\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1962\" style=\"width: 768px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1962\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/413\/2022\/12\/barack-michelle-obama_01-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"768\" height=\"576\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1962\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Public Domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Michelle Obama\u00a0had expectations for her first visit to\u00a0Hawaii\u00a0with then-boyfriend\u00a0Barack Obama, and the future president shattered them all.<\/p>\n<p>The former first lady told\u00a0Jimmy Kimmel\u00a0that she was a second-year law associate dreading another Chicago winter when Obama invited her to meet his grandparents, \u201cToot\u201d (Madelyn Dunham) and \u201cGramps\u201d (Stanley Dunham), for Christmas in Hawaii.<\/p>\n<p>She had never been but had seen the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/bradybunch.fandom.com\/wiki\/Hawaii_Bound\">iconic \u201cBrady Bunch\u201d episodes<\/a>\u00a0there. She pictured leis and hula dancing and anticipated cocktails and long beach walks. But the reality proved entirely different. \u201cI don\u2019t see a beach anywhere. I don\u2019t see Greg Brady. I see nothing that I was expecting,\u201d the \u201cBecoming\u201d author recalled.<\/p>\n<p>She said she quickly became entrenched in Toot and Gramps\u2019 routine. On TV trays, they ate tuna and sweet-pickle sandwiches two days a row. They did jigsaw puzzles and watched \u201c60 Minutes\u201d on the third. And all she kept thinking was, \u201cDude, where\u2019s the romantic stuff?\u201d she said until she had an epiphany.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought romance and love was mai tais and sunsets on the beach, but Barack was showing me that family was important, that he showed up for his family, and he continued to show up for our family in the same way,\u201d Obama said. Her anecdote came from her new book, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/the-light-we-carry\/dp\/0593237463\">The Light We Carry<\/a>,\u201d and a chapter called \u201cPartnering Well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DderdnKnjTE\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Barack and Michelle Obama\u00a0spent eight years in the\u00a0White House,\u00a0modeling a loving, happy relationship for the country and world. But their love story goes back way further than that, to their days at a Chicago law firm that eventually led to a first date, a family, and a partnership admired by millions.<\/p>\n<p>In 1989, Michelle Robinson, a 25-year-old attorney at the Chicago firm of Sidley Austin, was tasked with showing the new guy, Barack Obama, around. \u201cBecause I went to Harvard, and he went to Harvard, and the firm thought, Oh, we\u2019ll hook these two people up,\u201d she told\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/Vote2008\/story?id=5937546&amp;page=1\">ABC News<\/a>. \u201cSo, you know, there was a little intrigue, but I must say after about a month, Barack, about a month in, asked me out, and I thought, No way. This is completely tacky.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot once, though, did I think about him as someone I\u2019d want to date,\u201d she wrote in her memoir,\u00a0<em>Becoming<\/em>. \u201cFor one thing, I was his mentor at the firm. I\u2019d also recently sworn off dating altogether, too consumed with work to put any effort into it.\u201d Eventually, they go on that date, which involves ice cream, a long walk, and a movie. A fictionalized version of the day was turned into a film:\u00a0<em>Southside With You<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe clicked right away\u2026by the end of the date, it was over\u2026I was sold,\u201d Michelle\u00a0said. Meanwhile, Barack\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oprahmag.com\/entertainment\/tv-movies\/a32347191\/michelle-barack-obama-marriage-timeline\/\">told\u00a0<em>O,<\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u201cI treated her to the finest ice cream Baskin-Robbins had to offer, our dinner table doubling as the curb. I kissed her, and it tasted like chocolate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After two years of dating, Barack and Michelle got engaged on July 31, 1991.\u00a0Obviously, she said yes, and the couple got married on October 3, 1992.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michelle Obama\u00a0had expectations for her first visit to\u00a0Hawaii\u00a0with then-boyfriend\u00a0Barack Obama, and the future president shattered them all. The former first lady told\u00a0Jimmy Kimmel\u00a0that she was a second-year law associate dreading another Chicago winter when Obama invited her to meet his grandparents, \u201cToot\u201d (Madelyn Dunham) and \u201cGramps\u201d (Stanley Dunham), for Christmas in Hawaii. She had never&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":1962,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[327,330],"class_list":["post-1947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-relationships","tag-michelle-obama","tag-romance"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Michelle Obama Details How Barack Obama Crushed Her Idea of Romance on Her First Hawaii Visit<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"While visiting the &quot;Jimmy Kimmel Show,&quot; former First Lady Michelle Obama detailed how Barack crushed her idea of romance on a Hawaii trip.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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