Marian Robinson, the mother of former First Lady Michelle Obama, has died at age 86. The family announced the news in a statement to NBC News on Friday.
“She passed peacefully this morning, and right now, none of us are quite sure how exactly we’ll move on without her,” the family told NBC News.
Robinson, who was born in 1937, grew up in Chicago’s south side. That’s also where she raised her children, Michelle and Craig Robinson. The Illinois native left her home in Chicago and moved to Washington D.C. when Barack Obama became president in 2009.
“I felt like this was going to be a very hard life for both of them,” Robinson told CBS Mornings in 2018 as she reflected on why she moved in with 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 loved ones expressed deep gratitude for the 86-year-old as they released their statement on Friday.
“We needed her. The girls needed her. And she ended up being our rock through it all,” the family 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.”
In her interview with CBS This Morning, Robinson said it was a “huge adjustment” for her when she moved into the White House because she’s used to doing everything for herself. The Chicago native said she had to convince the White House residence staff to let her wash her own clothes.
In their statement on Friday, the family said their loved always stayed humble.
“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. “The only guest she made a point of asking to meet was the Pope.”
Barack Obama echoed a similar sentiment in a previous interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
“She’s down to Earth and she doesn’t understand all the fuss,” he said.
Michelle Obama often expresses her love for her mother publicly. The former First Lady recently went to social media on Mother’s Day to reveal that the family has dedicated an exhibit at the Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago to honor Robinson.
“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 Michelle said in a video announcement. “I simply wouldn’t be who I am today without my mom.”
