Former First Lady Michelle Obama appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show Thursday to promote her new book, “Becoming,” and walked away with all of our hearts…and we walked away with some of her secrets.
The usually guarded matriarch discussed the day same-sex marriage became legal in the United States (she walked into the crowd to celebrate), her husband’s presidential inaugurations, her daughter’s prom, and more previously undisclosed memories from the White House.
“We’re in the White House, and when you’re in the residence, there’s so much bulletproof glass that sometimes you don’t hear what’s going on outside,” she explained about the night marriage equality became legal federally. “We knew that there was celebration happening, but we didn’t realize that people – thousands of people – were gathering in front of the White House at that time to celebrate.”
She added, “Everybody was celebrating and people were crying, and I thought, ‘I want to be in that. I was sitting and watching it on TV and realizing, ‘I’m living this.’ I said, ‘I have to break out of this. I want to go outside, and I want to be a part of that celebration.'”
And break out she did.
“So now there are many people behind us,” she said of the White House staff that followed them as they tried to exit the residence. “They don’t know what to do. They were like, ‘Ma’am, where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m going out. We’re going out.'”
When prompted to discuss Malia’s prom experience, Obama shared: “Their whole lives were spent trying to have a normal life. Go to soccer matches and birthday parties and sleepovers and have kids come over with a security detail.”
Their lives were so heavily guarded that the girls had never driven in “another person’s car for security reasons.”
Obama recalled, “So everything in their lives is now a discussion. We have to pull in security. We have to talk to the chief of staff, talk to the communications director,” she said. “My thing was she’s gotta ride in the car with her prom date.”
The prom date arrived to pick Malia up for their date and it was anything but “normal.”
“We greet the young man in a nice tux and God knows what happened to him getting in, because I tried to make security know he’s coming. Don’t hassle him,” she said. “I told Malia, ‘Make sure his car is clean’ if you know what I mean, ’cause dogs sniff the car. I said, ‘I don’t want him to be embarrassed.'”
She continued, “So he comes in, and you can tell he’s a little nervous, and we shake his hand, take a picture, and they get in the car and they go off, and then three cars follow,. It’s like them and then three cars with three men with guns. And Barack was like, ‘This makes running for a second term all worthwhile. My daughter is being followed by men with guns to prom.'”
Oh, the stories they all have to tell one day.