WASHINGTON - Summer, 1991: An up-and-rising Chicago attorney, not yet 30, interviews for a job as an assistant to the mayor. The job offer is immediate. The attorney calls the next day. Not to accept, but to make a counteroffer: My fiance would like to meet you first.

Even back then, Michelle Obama displayed the kind of self-assuredness the public associates with her today, after watching as this woman, once ambivalent about politics, who never saw herself as a politician's wife, spent two years campaigning tirelessly to elect Barack Obama to the presidency.

She provided the presidential campaign with several memorable unguarded moments.

As in, cracking that she'd like to take Bill Clinton and "rip his eyes out."

And inartfully commenting about newfound pride in country, sparking a backlash by critics who accused her of being unpatriotic.

She is the family powerhouse who demanded that her husband quit smoking and who, when he called her to celebrate a legislative accomplishment, cut him off to say ants were overrunning the kitchen and bathroom and he needed to bring home traps.

Obama said he hung up wondering whether Sens. Edward M. Kennedy or John McCain ever bought ant traps on their way home.

As for the no-smoking edict, that's not been a complete success and it is easy to imagine her wagging finger should he slip up on that struggle at the White House.

Conventional wisdom is she helped his campaign by charming audiences. But there are other, less visible sides to Michelle Obama, the grown-up "daddy's girl" who turned 45 on Saturday.

Her deep roots and connections in Chicago led Obama to some of the people who would ultimately become major players in his political ascent.

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is Chicago through and through.

She was born and raised there, built a successful career there, and met her husband and gave birth to her two daughters there. Her longest stretch away came during the Ivy League years of the 1980s, when she followed older brother Craig east to Princeton University. She earned a sociology degree, followed by a law degree from Harvard.

After her husband's election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Michelle Obama declined to move to Washington. She chose instead to stay close to the friends-and-family support network that lent its hands as she juggled career, two young children and a household during his extended absences, whether he was in the state Senate in Springfield, Ill., or in Washington.

Her father, Fraser, was a Democratic precinct captain who worked swing shifts at the city water plant despite the multiple sclerosis that was crippling him.