Marian Robinson, the mother of former first lady Michelle Obama, has away, the family said in a statement to NBC News. Robinson’s age was eighty-six.
“She passed peacefully this morning, and right now, none of us are quite sure how exactly we’ll move on without her,” the family statement stated.
Michelle and Barack Obama, Craig Robinson and his spouse Kelly, and Marian Robinson’s grandchildren, Avery, Leslie, Malia, Sasha, Austin, and Aaron, are the signatories to the family statement.
Following her son-in-law, Barack Obama,’s victory in the 2008 presidential contest, Robinson gained notoriety among Americans as the nation’s first grandmother.
Despite keeping a low profile, she was a constant in the White House during his eight years in office. She went to concerts in the East Room, holiday parties, and the rare abroad vacation. However, she spent much of her time with her granddaughters, Malia and Sasha.
“I felt like this was going to be a very hard life for both of them,” she later stated, referring to her daughter and son-in-law. “And I was worried about their safety, and I was worried about my grandkids. That’s what got me to move to D.C.”
Robinson’s family claimed in a statement on Friday that she accepted to leave Chicago after receiving “a healthy nudge.”
“We needed her. The girls needed her. And she ended up being our rock through it all,” they stated.
“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,” they continued. Â
Born in 1937 in Chicago, Robinson grew up on the South Side of the city, raising her son Craig and daughter. Fraser Robinson, the man she was married to, passed away from multiple sclerosis in 1991.
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His mother-in-law was once described by the former president as “the least pretentious person I know.” In fact, Robinson said in the CBS interview that being catered to by White House residence staff—whom she claimed to have persuaded to allow her to wash her own laundry—was a “huge adjustment.”
“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 stated on Friday. “The only guest she made a point of asking to meet was the Pope.”
While his daughters were growing up in the White House, the former president said Robinson helped to keep them grounded.
Michelle Obama and her mother shared a tight bond. At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Robinson was the one who introduced her daughter in the biographical video.
Robinson also declared, “My saying is that when I grow up, I would like to be like Michelle Obama,” after departing the White House.
A few weeks ago, Michelle Obama announced that an exhibit at the Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago will bear her name as a Mother’s Day tribute.
