Marian Shields Robinson, the mother of Michelle Obama, has died at age 86
On election night 2008, as Barack Obama sat nervously in a Chicago hotel suite and awaited news on whether he would become the country’s first Black president, his mother-in-law was by his side.
“Are you ready for this, Grandma?” Obama asked Marian Shields Robinson, who years earlier had doubted that he and her daughter, Michelle, would last.
Six months, tops, she had predicted.
“Never one to overemote, my mom just gave him a sideways look and shrugged, causing them both to smile,” Michelle Obama wrote in her memoir, “Becoming.” “Later, though, she’d describe to me how overcome she’d felt right then, struck just as I’d been by his vulnerability. America had come to see Barack as self-assured and powerful, but my mother also recognized the gravity of the passage, the loneliness of the job ahead.”
She continued: “The next time I looked over, I saw that she and Barack were holding hands.”
The union of Barack and Michelle Obama, the 20-something lawyers who met one summer while working at a Chicago law firm, endured and made history. In her own way, Mrs. Robinson would, too.
She died peacefully on Friday, the former first lady and her brother, Craig Robinson, and their families announced in a statement.
“There was and will be only one Marian Robinson,” they said. “In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life. And we will spend the rest of ours trying to live up to her example.”
Besides being the mother of the nation’s first Black first lady, Mrs. Robinson was also unusual for being one of the few in-laws who lived at the White House with the president and his immediate family.
Until January 2009, Mrs. Robinson had lived her entire life in Chicago. She was a widow and in her early 70s when Obama was elected in 2008 and resisted the idea of starting over in Washington. President Obama said the family suggested she try Washington for three months before deciding. The first lady enlisted her brother to help persuade their mother to move.
“There were many good and valid reasons that Michelle raised with me, not the least of which was the opportunity to continue spending time with my granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, and to assist in giving them a sense of normalcy that is a priority for both of their parents, as has been from the time Barack began his political career,” Mrs.
