Factbox
Michelle Obama
Born Michelle Robinson in 1964 and raised in Chicago, Obama attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School before becoming a lawyer and meeting her future husband when they worked for the same law firm. She married Barack Obama in 1992 and joined the staff of then Chicago mayor Richard M Daley. She is deemed to be a fashion icon and role model for women, as well as an advocate for poverty awareness, nutrition and healthy eating.
Michelle Obama's highlights
First first lady of African-American ancestry
Tallest first lady at 183 cm
First first lady to announce an Oscar winner (2013)
Best-dressed first lady, Vanity Fair (2013)
Hottest woman in politics, Complex Magazine (2011)
Second first lady on the cover of Vogue (2009, 2013)
Fourth most-powerful woman in the world according to Forbes (2013)
First daughters Malia and Sasha
Michelle and Barack Obama have two daughters: Malia, born in 1998, and Sasha, born in 2001.
Malia and Sasha kept busy schedules as youngsters, with soccer, dance and drama for Malia, gymnastics and tap dancing for Sasha, and piano and tennis for both.
After their father's first inauguration, they adopted a Portuguese water dog named Bo as the "first dog".
As they grow older, Barack Obama says he's not worried about them starting to date, as he has "men with guns following them around all the time".
However, Michelle Obama has striven to give the girls a normal life, with homecoming dances, basketball games, Halloween trick-or-treating and slumber parties.
"First granny"Marian Robinson
Michelle Obama's mother, Marian Robinson (born 1937, now widowed) married Michelle's father, Fraser Robinson, in 1960. Marian Robinson worked as a secretary at a bank, and she tended the Obamas' young daughters during their 2008 campaigning for presidency.
She has continued to help care for the girls, taking them to school daily while living in the White House.
She is the first live-in "first granny" since the Eisenhower administration of the 1950s.
(China Daily 03/22/2014 page6)
