New book says Obama proposed to another woman twice before Michelle

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share via Email
• Copy Link

  Link Copied

According to a new biography about former President Barack Obama, before he met his wife Michelle, Obama proposed to and was rejected by another woman twice.

David Garrow, who wrote Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama claims in the book that while Obama was doing community organizing in Chicago in the 80s, he met Sheila Miyoshi Jager.

In the book, Jager tells Garrow that Obama had a sense even back then that he was one day going to be president, saying that he had “a deep-seated need to be loved and admired.”

In 1986, Jager claims, Obama proposed to her, but her parents were opposed to the match because she was too young. They continued to date, but as Obama moved more and more toward his political ambitions, he “felt trapped between the woman he loved and the destiny he knew was his” because he was worried about the damage that could be dealt him if he dated or married a woman who was not African-American.

Just before he went to Harvard Law, Obama supposedly proposed to Jager again, but she was in Seoul on a research trip and turned him down. After that, he met and fell for Michelle, though Garrow states that he was still seeing Jager on occasion for that first year.

Jager is now a professor of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College and has her own book, Iraqi Security Forces and Lessons from Korea, which was one of the books on Osama bin Laden’s shelf when he was killed.