Michelle Obama's Mother, Marian Robinson, Passes Away at 86

Marian Robinson

Marian Robinson be came a fixture of the White House when she moved from her hometown of Chicago to help take care of her granddaughters during the Obama administration.

According to news re ports, former First Lady Michelle Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, has died. A family statement shared with NBC News, Robinson was 86 years old.

“She passed peacefully Friday morning. and right now, none of us are quite sure how exactly we’ll move on without her,” the family statement said.

The family statement is from Michelle and Barack Obama; Craig Robinson and his wife, Kelly; and Marian Robinson’s grand children, Avery, Leslie, Malia, Sasha, Austin and Aaron.

Robinson became known to Americans as the country’s first grandmother after her son-in-law, Barack Obama, won the 2008 presidential election. She was a fixture in the White House during his eight years in office, though she kept a low profile. She attended holiday events, the occasional overseas trip and concerts in the East Room. But most often she was with her granddaughters, Sasha and Malia.

Marian Robinson moved to Washington, D.C., to help take care of her grand daughters in the White House. Having lived in Chicago her entire life, Robinson agreed to move to Washington, D.C., in 2009 to live in the White House residence and help take care of her granddaughters, who were seven and 10 years old at the time.

“I felt like this was go ing to be a very hard life for both of them,” she later said in a CBS interview, re ferring to her daughter and son-in-law. “And I was worried about their safety, and I was worried about my grandkids. That’s what got me to move to D.C.”

Robinson was born in Chicago in 1937 and grew up in the city’s South Side, where she raised her daughter and son, Craig Robinson. She was married to Fraser Robinson, who died in 1991 from multiple sclerosis.

The former president once called his mother-in law “the least pretentious person I know.” Indeed, Robinson said in the CBS interview that it was a “huge adjustment” being waited on by White House residence staff, whom she said she convinced to let her do her own laundry.

"Rather than hobnob bing with Oscar winners or Nobel laureates, she pre ferred spending her time upstairs with a TV tray, in the room outside her bed room with big windows that looked out at the Washington Monument," the family said in its state ment Friday. "The only guest she made a point of asking to meet was the Pope."

The former president credited Robinson with keeping his daughters grounded while they grew up in the White House.

“She’s down to Earth and she doesn’t under stand all the fuss,” he said in an interview on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."