Michelle Obama’s Mother, Marian Robinson, Dies at 86

Marian Robinson, mother of former First Lady Michelle Obama, has passed away at 86, according to a family statement shared with NBC News.

“She passed peacefully this morning, and right now, none of us are quite sure how exactly we’ll move on without her,” the family said.

The statement came from Michelle and Barack Obama; Craig Robinson and his wife, Kelly; and Marian’s grandchildren, Avery, Leslie, Malia, Sasha, Austin, and Aaron.

Known as the nation’s first grandmother after Barack Obama’s 2008 election win, Robinson became a quiet yet constant presence in the White House. She attended holiday events, overseas trips, and East Room concerts, but mainly stayed with her granddaughters, Sasha and Malia.

In 2009, Robinson moved from Chicago to Washington, D.C., to help care for her granddaughters, then seven and ten years old.

“I felt like this was going to be a very hard life for both of them,” she said in a CBS interview, 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.”

Her family noted she agreed to leave Chicago with “a healthy nudge.”

“We needed her. The girls needed her. And she ended up being our rock through it all,” they said.

“She relished her role as a grandmother. She enforced household rules but made it clear she sided with her ‘grandbabies’ against their strict parents.”

Born in Chicago in 1937, Robinson grew up on the South Side and raised her daughter and son, Craig. She was married to Fraser Robinson, who passed away in 1991.

President Obama once called his mother-in-law “the least pretentious person I know.” Robinson found it a “huge adjustment” being served by White House staff, eventually convincing them to let her do her own laundry.

“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 said. “The only guest she made a point of asking to meet was the Pope.”

Obama credited Robinson with keeping his daughters grounded in the White House.

“She’s down to Earth and she doesn’t understand all the fuss,” he said in an interview on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

Michelle Obama had a close bond with her mother. Robinson narrated the video introducing her daughter at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. After leaving the White House, Robinson said, “My saying is when I grow up, I would like to be like Michelle Obama.”

Recently, Michelle Obama honored her mother on Mother’s Day by announcing an exhibit at the Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago named after her.

“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,” Michelle Obama said in a video. “I simply wouldn’t be who I am today without my mom.”

The family’s statement said, “there was and will be only one Marian Robinson,” adding, “In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life. And we will spend the rest of ours trying to live up to her example.”