Michelle wasn't Barack Obama's first choice for First Lady; Ex-girlfriend says he proposed to her twice

Former US President Barack Obama allegedly proposed to another woman twice before he married Michelle. A book claims that Obama and the woman continued seeing each other despite the former's deepening relationship with Michelle Robinson.

Author David J. Garrow through a book titled “In Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama” claimed that the former POTUS asked Sheila Miyoshi Jager, a current professor at Oberlin College, to marry him before he met the former first lady. The proposal allegedly happened not only once, but twice.

"In the winter of '86, when we visited my parents, he asked me to marry him," Jager told Garrow as per The Washington Post. Though she replied with “Not yet,” they still remained together.

According to the publication’s review, Jager refused Obama’s proposal at that time because her mother thought she was too young; she was 23, while Obama was 25. Jager also talked about how Obama turned out to be so ambitious with his sights on becoming president.

The second proposal took place in 1988 when Obama supposedly asked his alleged former girlfriend to postpone her dissertation research in Seoul, Korea and marry him. By then, he reportedly planned to go to Cambridge, Massachusetts with her.

Jager said she speculated that he felt compelled to propose for the second time out of desperation over their eventual parting. She was about to enter Harvard Law School the same year. Jager described their life together as “an island unto ourselves,” in which Obama would “compartmentalize his work and home life.”

“Barack and Sheila had continued to see each other irregularly throughout the 1990-91 academic year, notwithstanding the deepening of Barack’s relationship with Michelle Robinson,” Garrow wrote. Jager said it was something she had always felt bad about. She was virtually written out from “Dreams From My Father.”

Like Obama’s distant mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, Jager studied anthropology. Dunham focused on Indonesia, while Jager’s expertise is on the Korean Peninsula.

In relation to the former POTUS’ personal life, Christopher Andersen, who wrote "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage," said that although Obama had seriously dated a number of women, Michelle was the only one who is African-American. He added that Obama recognised the value of marrying a black woman, but Andersen was quick to clarify through TMZ that the love between the couple is "real and profound." The former first couple tied the knot on Oct. 3, 1992.

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