1. As a child, she loved girlie stuff like her Easy Bake Oven and Barbie (she had the car and the house, too).
2. When it comes to television, she's a fan of Sex in the City, The Sopranos and HGTV.
3. Her favorite author: Toni Morrison
4. Her father, Fraser Robinson, a former boxer, suffered from multiple sclerosis from age 30. He was a Democratic precinct captain and worked at the city water filtration plant in Chicago. Although he met and liked Barack, he died in 1991, a year before the Obamas were married.
5. As a kid, she alternated days doing dish-washing duty with her big brother, Craig. It was also her job to clean the bathroom every Saturday.
6. She skipped second grade.
7. She attended Whitney Young, Chicago's first magnet high school, where she was student council treasurer, a member of the National Honor Society and a four-year honor roll student.
8. She's a 1985 cum laude graduate of Princeton University, where she shared a room with three other women and had to walk down three flights of stairs to get to the bathroom.
9. She graduated from Harvard Law School in 1988 and was hired by the blue chip law firm Sidley & Austin in Chicago, where she specialized in marketing and intellectual property law. She was picked to be the adviser to a summer associate, Barack Obama.
10. She doesn't wearpantyhose because they always rip; she says it's difficult to find ones that fit her 5-foot-11 frame.
11.The Rev. Jesse Jackson's daughter, Santita, sang at her wedding. They're childhood friends.
12. As a newlywed, she gave up corporate law and took a huge pay cut to open the Chicago office of Public Allies, part of former President Clinton's AmeriCorps, which helped young people to enter public service work.
13. She sits on six boards, including the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, which her daughters, Sasha and Malia, attend.
14. In a job interview with University of Chicago Hospitals, she brought along baby daughter Sasha (now 7) because she couldn't find a baby sitter. She got the job.
15. She likes predawn workouts and held outdoor jump-rope clinics at her house for her daughter's ballet class.
