Michelle Obama Reveals Why She First Fell In Love With Husband Barack Obama

Barack and Michelle Obama have always bonded over their compassion for others!

The former First Lady welcomed her husband as the first guest for the debut episode of “The Michelle Obama Podcast,” which launched exclusively on Spotify on July 29. The pair’s lengthy conversation ranged from their childhood upbringings to the early years of their relationship and their recent time spent together in lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

At one point, the “Becoming” author revealed what initially attracted her to the future 44th president, admitting, “You know that at the core of everything you have done politically, what I know about you as a person and one of the reasons why I fell in love with you is…”

Before she could finish, Barack joked, “It wasn’t just my looks.” Michelle replied, “You’re cute, you know. But no, one of the reasons I fell in love with you is because you are guided by the principle that we are each other’s brother’s and sister’s keepers. And that’s how I was raised.”

She continued, “My values, in terms of what I think my obligation — my personal obligation, Michelle Obama — is that it is not enough that I succeed on my own… if something good happens to you, if you have an advantage, you don’t hoard it. You share it. You reach out. You give back.”

The couple also shared the legacy that they hope to leave behind for their two daughters, Malia, 22, and Sasha, 19. “When you and I think about, ‘What’s the inheritance that we would like to leave Malia and Sasha?'” Barack said. “More than anything, what it would be is that they are living in a country that respects everybody and looks after everybody, celebrates and sees everybody. ‘Cause we know that if we’re not around, [if] those girls are in a society like that, they’ll be fine.”

Barack and Michelle had their first date at an ice cream shop in Chicago in the summer of 1989. “I treated her to the finest ice cream Baskin-Robbins had to offer, our dinner table doubling as the curb,” he told O Magazine in 2007. “I kissed and it tasted like chocolate.”

The pair tied the knot two years later on October 3, 1992 and the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and shared their first dance to Stevie Wonder’s song, “You and I.”

— Gabi Duncan