Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama is the wife of U.S. president Barack Obama, and our 44th First Lady.

She's also a lawyer and a former Chicago city administrator/community outreach worker. Reared in a blue-collar home on Chicago's South Side, she was an associate at a law firm when she met Obama. He was a summer intern, and she was assigned to advise him.

She has worked in the offices of Chicago's mayor and its planning commission, headed a career-training program for young adults and directed community affairs for the University of Chicago and its medical center. She caught the eye of a national audience at her husband's side after he delivered a high-profile speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. He was elected to the U.S. Senate that same year.

Three years later, she scaled back her own professional work to attend to family and campaign obligations during Obama's run for president.

She's a 1985 graduate of Princeton University. Her brother, Craig Robinson, class of 1983, was a basketball star and is now a college coach at the same university. Although she's younger than Barack Obama, she graduated from Harvard Law School before him in 1988.

The Obamas were married in 1992 and have two daughters, Malia (born 1998) and Natasha (called Sasha, born 2001).