Marian Robinson, the mother of former First Lady Michelle Obama, passed away at the age of 86.
According to a family statement, Robinson died “peacefully” on Friday morning.
Robinson was a prominent presence at the White House throughout Barack Obama’s presidency from 2009 to 2017.
During this period, she was primarily involved in caring for her granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, the daughters of Michelle and Barack Obama.
In a statement shared on X, Michelle Obama referred to her mother as her “rock, always there for whatever I needed.”
“She was the same steady backstop for our entire family, and we are heartbroken to share she passed away today,” she wrote.
In a separate tweet, Mr Obama said that “there was and will be only one Marian Robinson”.
“In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life,” he added. “And we will spend the rest of ours trying to live up to her example.”
No additional information about the cause of death was provided.
Born in 1937, Marian Robinson was one of seven children raised in Chicago, where she spent the majority of her life before moving to Washington DC following Barack Obama’s election victory.
In her early years, she pursued a teaching career before becoming a secretary. Alongside her husband, Frasier Robinson, she raised Michelle and their other child, Craig, on Chicago’s South Side.
“At every step, as our families went down paths none of us could have predicted, she remained our refuge from the storm,” the Obama statement said.
“On Election Night in 2008, when the news broke that Barack would soon shoulder the weight of the world, she was there, holding his hand.”
An image taken on the night in 2008 when her son-in-law made history as the nation’s first African-American president showed Robinson sitting on a sofa with him, watching the results come in.
The statement added that Robinson had agreed to move to the White House after a “healthy nudge” from Barack and Michelle Obama, who, along with their daughters, “needed her”.
Marian Robinson later shared that she insisted on doing her own laundry at the White House.
In an interview with CBS, the BBC’s US partner, Robinson mentioned she felt compelled to move to Washington because she believed “this was going to be a very hard life” for her daughter and son-in-law.
“And I was worried about their safety,” she added. “I was worried about my grandkids. That’s what got me to move to DC.”
The lifelong Chicago resident had never boarded a flight out of the US until she flew aboard Air Force One with the Obamas to France in 2009.
Robinson – whom Mr Obama once called “the least pretentious person” he knew – said that it was a “huge adjustment” to have her needs met by White House staff.
“Rather than hobnobbing with Oscar winners or Nobel laureates, 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 statement said.
“The only guest she made a point of asking to meet was the Pope,” it added.
Her privacy granted her a level of freedom that the rest of her family envied. David Axelrod, a senior advisor to Obama, told CNN on Friday that “she would often slip out of the White House on her own and visit with friends.”
“She really wasn’t looking for attention,” he added.
On Mother’s Day, just weeks before Marian Robinson’s passing, Michelle Obama announced that an exhibit at the Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago would be named in her honor.
“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 to think for myself,” Mrs Obama said in a video announcement.
“I simply wouldn’t be who I am today without my mom.”
