Did you know Obama proposed to a woman twice and was rejected before he met Michelle?
By Rita Chioma
Years before former US president, Barack Obama met his wife, Michelle, at her Chicago law firm, the ex-president of the United States had asked another woman to marry him in 1986 — while the two were visiting her parents’ home, a new biography claims.
“Rising Star,” which is written by David J. Garrow, was reviewed Tuesday in the Washington Post.
According to the review, Sheila Miyoshii Jager, his love interest then, refused his advances at the time because her mother said she was too young. She was 23 and Obama was 25.
The two continued to see each other, but Jager told Garrow that shortly after the proposal, Obama became more ambitious. “I remember very specifically that by 1987, about a year into our relationship, he already had his sights on becoming president,” she said, according to the book.
The review pointed out that Jager, now a professor at Oberlin College, was all but written out of Obama’s famous book “Dreams From My Father.”
Obama went off to Harvard Law School and met Michelle Robinson at the Chicago law firm where she was employed, wrote Garrow, who received the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Martin Luther King Jr.
“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, according to the review. “I always felt bad about it,” Jager reportedly said.
