Marian Robinson, the mother of former first lady Michelle Obama, has died at the age of 86, her family announced Friday.
“She passed away peacefully this morning, and at this time, none of us know exactly how we will move forward without her,” the statement said.
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Robinson was born in 1937 and grew up on the South Side of Chicago, one of seven children. She trained as a teacher before working as a secretary. She married Fraser Robinson and they had two children together, Michelle and Craig Robinson. Fraser died in 1991.
When her son-in-law, former President Barack Obama, won the presidency in 2008, her family persuaded her to leave Chicago and move to the White House.
“We needed her,” the family’s statement read Friday. “The girls needed her. And she ended up being our pillar through it all.”
In a 2018 interview with “CBS Mornings” Alongside her daughter, she described the move as a “huge adjustment” but felt she had to do it to help care for her granddaughters, Sasha and Malia Obama.
“I felt like it was going to be a very difficult life for both of them, and I was worried about their safety and I was worried about my grandchildren,” Robinson told “CBS Mornings.”
However, Michelle Obama said her mother quickly became a “beloved figure” in the White House.
“She had a flood of people,” Obama said in 2018. “The butlers, the housekeepers were all coming through… Grandma’s room was like the confessional, you know, everyone would go in there and unload, You know. “And then they would leave. People still visit mom in Chicago.”
After Obama’s second term, Robinson returned to Chicago, “reconnecting with longtime friends, exchanging ideas, traveling and enjoying a good glass of wine,” her family said.
In that 2018 interview, she said it wasn’t the White House she missed, just the people, “because they were like family to me.”
“As our mother, she was our support, a calm, non-judgmental witness to our triumphs and stumbles,” the family said Friday. “She was always, always there, welcoming us home, no matter how far we had come, with this deep, abiding love.”
On Saturday, President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden said in a statement that Robinson was a “devoted mother and grandmother with a fierce and unconditional love for her family.”
“With the blessing of friendship, we felt that love for ourselves – with every quiet smile or warm embrace she shared with us,” the Bidens said. “She believed, like us, that family was the beginning, the middle and the end. She moved into the White House to be there for her family when they needed her most, and in doing so, she served her country alongside them. His life reminds us that we are a great nation because we are good people.
—Jessica Kegu contributed to this report.