Marian Robinson, Michelle Obama’s mother has died at the age of 86. The family said Robinson died ‘peacefully’ on Friday morning.
Mrs Obama paid tribute to her mother in a statement on X on Friday evening.
‘My mom Marian Robinson was my rock, always there for whatever I needed. She was the same steady backstop for our entire family, and we are heartbroken to share she passed away today.’
The family also made a statement on Friday evening.
‘There was and will be only one Marian Robinson. 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,’ the Obama family stated.
Mrs Robinson became known to Americans across the country as the country’s first grandmother after son-in-law, Barack Obama, won the 2008 presidential election.
Despite living in the White House for his entire eight years in office she kept a low profile.
Robinson would attend holiday events and even go on trips overseas.
She would occasionally be seen at concerts in the East Room.
But she was spent most of her time with her granddaughters, Saha and Malia who were just even and 10-years-old at the time.
‘I felt like this was going to be a very hard life for both of them,’ she later said in a CBS News interview, speaking about her daughter and son-in-law Barack.
‘I was worried about their safety, and I was worried about my grandkids. That’s what got me to move to D.C.’
The family’s statement on Friday realized just how integral she was to the family.
‘We needed her. The girls needed her. And she ended up being our rock through it all,’ they said.
‘She relished her role as a grandmother. … And although she enforced whatever household rules we’d set for bedtime, watching TV, or eating candy, she made clear that she sided with her ‘grandbabies’ in thinking that their parents were too darn strict,’ the family added.
In the CBS interview, Robinson says how it was a ‘huge adjustment’ being waited on by White House. staff – but she eventually convinced them to let her do her own laundry.
Robinson was born in Chicago in 1937 and grew up in the city’s South Side.
She married Fraser Robinson, who died in 1991 from multiple sclerosis.
Together they raised a daughter, Michelle, and son, Craig Robinson.
The former president once called his mother-in-law ‘the least pretentious person I know.’
‘Rather than hobnobbing with Oscar winners or Nobel laureates, she preferred spending her time upstairs with a TV tray, in the room outside her bedroom with big windows that looked out at the Washington Monument,’ the family said in its statement on Friday.
‘The only guest she made a point of asking to meet was the Pope.’
‘At every step, as our families went down paths none of us could have predicted, she remained our refuge from the storm,’ the Obama statement said.
‘On Election Night in 2008, when the news broke that Barack would soon shoulder the weight of the world, she was there, holding his hand.’
Former president Barack Obama credited Robinson with keeping his daughters grounded during their time in the White House.
‘She’s down to Earth and she doesn’t understand all the fuss,’ he said in an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Michelle Obama was particularly close to her mother.
Robinson introduced her daughter in 2008 during the Democratic National Convention.
Only weeks ago, Michelle paid honored her mom on Mother’s Day.
She announced an exhibit at the Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago would be named after her.
‘In so many ways she fostered in me a deep sense of confidence in who I was and who I could be by teaching me how to think for myself, how to use my own voice, and how to understand my own worth,’ the former first lady said in a video.
‘I simply wouldn’t be who I am today without my mom.’