Michelle Obama Reveals Her Family First Approved of Barack After He Passed This Test

Sara Kitnick
·4 min read

Michelle Obama had her brother Craig Robinson on episode 4 of The Michelle Obama Podcast Wednesday and as expected, they were not afraid to spill a bit of tea. The brother and sister sat down for an intimate conversation looking back on fond memories of their childhood, their dad’s struggle with MS, playing tricks on their parents, and as Michelle got older, how her brother felt about his little sister dating; Robinson even remembered the first time the former first lady “finally” let her family meet then-boyfriend Barack Obama.

“There may have been one or two guys you dated that I absolutely did not like,” Robinson said about some of Michelle’s former beaus. “But for the most part, your decisions on who to date, were solid, you know, just being able to, judge people, and develop your own relationships, and be able to navigate that, at a young age, and you were usually a pretty short term dating, eh, lemme date this guy for a month, nah, and then lo and behold you meet, uh, Barack Obama.”

More from SheKnows

View this post on Instagram

My brother @craigmalrob is someone who will always be there for me, someone who will lift my spirits, and keep me in check. He’s known me from the first breath I took––and that’s a gift that has no parallel in my life. I know that not everyone has siblings of their own—some of us might have fraught relationships with our brothers and sisters, and others might have lasting connections with friends that take on a sibling relationship. But no matter the specifics of our situations, hopefully we’re all lucky enough to have someone who knows us inside and out—someone who gives us the strength to take flight. For me, that’s Craig. And on this week’s episode of The #MichelleObamaPodcast, we reflect on everything from growing up on the South Side of Chicago to our perspectives as parents. You can listen to our conversation now by clicking the link in my bio.

A post shared by Michelle Obama (@michelleobama) on Aug 19, 2020 at 6:02am PDT

“So after a while, you were like finally gonna let us meet him. You drove up in your nice black Saab, and you were driving of course, and he gets out of the passenger side, and I remember the first thing mom said, Oooh he’s tall, he’s kinda good lookin’,” Robinson continued. And Michelle made it clear that what her family thought about Barack was important to her. “So, I did ask you,” Michelle said. “In the way that we learned, that you could check out the character of another dude, was to, take him on the court, and play some basketball.”

“Yeah. And I’m like whoa,” Robin quipped. “Wait a minute, wait a minute, these are professionals I play with, we can’t just be bringing some guy there, it’ll make him look bad, so I was like, ugh, lemme figure how to do this out. So we have this pickup game, and, when you play pickup basketball, a lot is based on integrity. Because you have to call your own fouls, there are no referees. And there’s always that guy who acts like he’s a good dude, until, he has to make his own calls, and he’s callin’ fouls all the time.”

“Well, Barack wasn’t that guy,” Robinson continued. “And that was good to see, that was the first thing. The second thing is, he could actually play a little bit. He wasn’t lying about that he played, about how good he was…he was just like, ‘I play a little bit’, and, it spoke a lot to his authenticity, as far as I was concerned.”

So it seems that Barack passed the family test, because, how could he not?!

Before you go, click here to see which celebrity marriages have defied the odds.

Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson
Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson

Launch Gallery: All the Longest Celebrity Marriages That Defied the Hollywood Odds

Best of SheKnows

Sign up for SheKnows' Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.