Michelle Obama often says that Barack Obama is her best friend — but when it comes to the real MVP in her life, it’s not her husband. That title goes to Michelle’s big brother, Craig Robinson. Just two years her senior (and her only sibling), Robinson isn’t just family — he’s the lifelong confidant and partner-in-crime she’s always had by her side.

Michelle’s adoration for her brother is crystal clear. In the dedication of her memoir “Becoming,” she wrote: “You have been my protector since the day I was born. You have made me laugh more than any other person on this earth. You are the best brother a sister could ask for, a loving and caring son, husband, and father.” And the love goes both ways. Robinson once told Time that despite Michelle’s turn as first lady, their bond has always stayed grounded. “The conversations are what you think they would be among close members of a family,” he said. “We talk about the kids, we talk about the schooling, we talk about how each other is doing and that’s pretty much it.”

Their sibling bond is still rock-solid, as proven by the launch of their joint podcast “IMO” in March 2025. They’re wholesome, supportive, and surprisingly normal for a duo who have shared the world stage. But even the closest siblings have their quirks — and this pair is no exception. Here are some of the more unexpected and downright weird things about their relationship.

Siblings love to bicker over who the favorite child is — but in the case of Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson, there’s no debate. The golden child title doesn’t go to the former first lady. Nope, it goes to Robinson. Even living in the White House for eight years wasn’t enough to shift the odds in Obama’s favor. “I am the First Lady but my mother is like, ‘When is Craig coming?’ I’m like, ‘I live in the White House. What more do I have to do?'” Obama quipped on “Good Morning America,” and without missing a beat, Robinson confirmed it: “I am the favorite.”

And he might be right. He’s so deep in his favorite-child status that he managed to convince their mom, Marian Robinson, to move into the White House — something Obama couldn’t even pull off herself. According to Craig, Marian wasn’t keen on the idea at first. “My mom, she is not the sort of intrusive in-law. She would never want to even stay over and babysit our kids. She’d go home. She really didn’t want to join them in the White House for that reason,” he shared, but he knew how to work it. “I just sort of positioned it like, you will helping your granddaughters out, number one, and if you move into the White House, then I’ll come to visit you more.” Apparently, that did the trick. Forget being a former first lady — when your brother is the favorite, even you have to get in line for mom’s attention.

Sibling fights are par for the course — whether it’s battling over who gets the last slice of pizza or squabbling about who owes what on the family Netflix account. But for Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson? They’ve only really fought once. Ever. Which is borderline suspicious if you ask us.

In her memoir “Becoming,” Obama revealed that their one big blow-up happened under heartbreaking circumstances: while choosing a casket for their father, Fraser Robinson III, who passed away in 1991. Naturally, grief brought out their polar opposites. “I wanted to buy the fanciest, most expensive casket in the place, complete with every extra handle and cushion a casket could possibly have. … Craig, meanwhile, insisted that Dad would want something basic — modest and practical and nothing more,” Obama wrote. “We were yelling for reasons that had nothing to do with the actual argument.”

Eventually, cooler heads (and shared grief) prevailed. They realized they weren’t mad at each other — they were just too heartbroken to think and act rationally. And according to Obama, that was pretty much the first and last time they argued.

Older brothers can be protective, but Craig Robinson didn’t just keep an eye on Michelle Obama — he practically ran background checks on her behalf. From prom dates to serious boyfriends, Robinson vetted every guy who came near his sister. And yes, that includes a certain lanky law student named Barack Obama.

A Princeton alum who played forward for the school’s basketball team and was drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers (though he never joined the league), Robinson had enough campus clout that most guys didn’t even try. “When she [Michelle] first got to Princeton, I was still there, and I think guys wouldn’t date her just because they knew I was her brother,” he told Esquire. “Barack is the only guy she asked me to play against.”

That’s right — Michelle had Barack play a game of basketball with her brother as a kind of character test. And Robinson took it seriously. “My sister didn’t have many long-term boyfriends. So I was thinking, This guy seems like a pretty good guy; I hope he makes it. I was rooting for him. But here I am with this responsibility: if he turns out to be a, er, jerk, I’ve got to be the one to tell her,” he shared with Time. And luckily, Barack held his own on the court. “He handled everything perfectly,” Robinson recalled. “The best part about it was that when we were on the same team, he did not pass me the ball every single time. He wasn’t trying to suck up to my sister through me. … I was relieved to give my sister the good news: ‘Your boy is straight, and he can ball.'”

It’s no secret that Michelle Obama was never exactly thrilled about the idea of her husband running for president. In fact, in “Becoming,” she admitted that she doubted the whole thing. Sure, she backed him publicly, but privately? She was bracing for heartbreak.

“I said yes, though I was at the same time harboring a painful thought, one I wasn’t ready to share: I supported him in campaigning, but I also felt certain he wouldn’t make it all the way,” she wrote. “He spoke so often and so passionately of healing our country’s divisions, appealing to a set of higher ideals he believed were innate in most people. But I’d seen enough of the divisions to temper my own hopes.”

As we all know, she eventually came around. But her change of heart didn’t just happen overnight — and it definitely wasn’t all Barack’s doing. He had help from someone who knew her better than most: her big brother. When Barack realized Michelle wasn’t fully sold on his presidential dreams, he called in reinforcement in the form of Craig Robinson. “I said, ‘Let me talk to Meech,’ and that’s when I came and talked to you and just gave you your advice that you had given me back, pretty much, about following your passion and doing the things you love,” Robinson said to his sister in an episode of the “IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson” podcast. “The thing that pushed it over the top was I convinced you to not penalize him for being really good at what he does.”

For a brother-sister duo who claim to be thick as thieves, Craig Robinson and Michelle Obama didn’t always share everything — especially when things got messy. During an episode of their joint podcast, Robinson admitted he kept his first marriage troubles under wraps, choosing not to confide in Obama when things started to fall apart. Apparently, he was worried she’d never look at his ex the same way again.

“I know my sister, and I said, if I tell her about this, she’s never going to get over it,” he admitted. “And if we ever got back together, it wasn’t going to be good for my first wife.” Michelle, for her part, wasn’t exactly fooled. “I thought I saw some things that were red flags, but I would always be like, ‘How you doing?’ and your reply would be, ‘We’re great, we’re good,’ ” she said, adding that looking back, she believed she could have handled the truth — messy, complicated, or not. “Even though you think I wouldn’t have been able to handle it, I would have gotten myself together to give you sound advice and be able to stay neutral,” she told him, and went on to note that what stung was feeling shut out by the one person she thought would always confide in her. “But I felt like the dude I depended on the most, who I could tell anything, didn’t feel like he could come to me when he was dealing with something really hard in his life, which is his marriage falling apart.”

And to his credit, Robinson owned up to it: “That was a mistake.” At least they got past it!