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Michelle recalls things differently. A campaign spokeswoman says she had an edge getting into Princeton not because of affirmative action, but because her older brother was there as a scholar athlete. She was a "legacy," just like any other applicant with family ties to Princeton. Her aides say Michelle earned her way into Harvard on merit by distinguishing herself at Princeton.

Michelle did well enough at Harvard to land a job at Sidley & Austin, a blue-chip corporate-law firm in Chicago. She was making good money as an associate on track to becoming a partner. But the work—she was assigned to copyright and trademark cases—was dull. "I didn't see a whole lot of people who were just thrilled to be there," she says. "I met people who thought this was a good life. But were people waking up just bounding out of bed to get to work? No."

In 1989, she was assigned to mentor a young, unconventional summer associate by the name of Barack Obama. Michelle was unimpressed by the office gossip about the hotshot Harvard Law student, a biracial intern from Hawaii whom she dismissed as "a black guy who can talk straight." But she was disarmed by his confidence. He walked up to her one day and said, "I think we should go out on a date." She resisted, thinking it was inappropriate. She dropped her guard after he asked her to go to one of his community-organizing sessions in a church basement, where he delivered a stemwinding speech about closing the gap between what he called "the world as it is, and the world as it should be."

She was smitten. "I was, like, 'This guy is different'," she says. " 'He is really different, in addition to being nice and funny and cute and all that. He's got a seriousness and a commitment that you don't see every day'." She recalls thinking, " 'Well, you know, I'd like to be married to somebody who felt that deeply about things'." At this, she paused for a second. "Maybe I didn't say 'marry.' Scratch that part. It took him a little while." Each of them offered the other something they had lacked growing up—for her, a free-thinking outlook, for him, a sense of stability.

Michelle introduced him to her family. They liked him, but didn't expect him to last long. Michelle was a demanding girlfriend, always breaking up with one suitor or another, and it was something of a family joke that sooner or later she would toss him overboard, too. "The first thing I was worried about was, is this poor guy going to make the cut?" says her brother, Craig. "How long is it going to be until he gets fired?" Her mother remembers Obama as quiet and respectful. "He didn't talk about himself," she says. "He didn't tell us that he was running for president of the Harvard Law Review. We never realized that he was as bright as he is."

Soon after meeting Barack, Michelle suffered a personal crisis that made her rethink what she wanted to do with her life. Her father passed away in 1991 of complications from MS. Around the same time, her dear college friend, Suzanne Alele, died of lymphoma. She had admired Alele's free spirit. Unlike dutiful Michelle, her friend tried not to take life too seriously and she traveled widely. After Alele's funeral, Michelle thought, "If I died in four months, is this how I would have wanted to spend this time?"

Looking back, she says she realized she had unthinkingly climbed onto an "automatic path" of a corporate career. "I started thinking about the fact that I went to some of the best schools in the country and I have no idea what I want to do," she says. "That kind of stuff got me worked up because I thought, 'This isn't education. You can make money and have a nice degree. But what are you learning about giving back to the world, and finding your passion and letting that guide you, as opposed to the school you got into'?" She resolved to leave the law firm and mentor young people from the neighborhood she grew up in. But she was daunted by how little money she would make, and feared she would not be able to pay back her sizable student loans. Obama convinced her that if they married and combined their incomes, they could afford a more frugal life.

Michelle began writing job letters to various charities and city agencies. One landed on the desk of Valerie Jarrett, deputy chief of staff to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. "I interviewed Michelle, and an introductory session turned into an hour and a half," Jarrett tells NEWSWEEK. "I offered her a job at the end of the interview—which was totally inappropriate since it was the mayor's decision. She was so confident and committed and extremely open." Michelle was flattered by the quick offer. But though she came across as supremely confident to Jarrett, she had doubts about whether it was the right decision. She asked Barack to meet with Jarrett to discuss the job before she accepted.

Jarrett, who is now a senior adviser to the Obama campaign, became Michelle's mentor. She set Michelle to work with businesses caught in red tape between city departments. It wasn't exciting work, and it paid far less than her law-firm salary, but Michelle saw it as a first step in her new career in public service.

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