Michelle Obama Says Life Would Be “Smaller” Without Barack Obama Marriage

July 1991: A Surprise Proposal

Two years later, Barack popped the question over dinner at a Chicago restaurant, catching Michelle off-guard as she didn’t think they were on the same page about marriage. 

“He reached for my hand and said that as much as he loved me with his whole being, he still didn’t really see the point,” she wrote in her memoir Becoming. “Instantly, I felt the blood rise in my cheeks…Really? We were doing this now?”

 After all, the couple had gone back and forth debating the concept of marriage over dinner only for their conversation to come to a halt when the waiter delivered their dessert. Instead of a piece of chocolate cake sitting on Michelle’s dessert plate, however, there was a dark velvet box with a diamond ring inside. 

“Barack looked at me playfully. He’d baited me. It had all been a ruse. It took me a second to dismantle my anger and slide into joyful shock,” she continued. “He’d riled me up because this was the very last time he would invoke his inane marriage argument, ever again, as long as we both should live.”