Watch: Malia Obama, Sasha Obama Make Rare Joint Appearance at Dad Barack Obama’s Presidential Center Opening
Malia Obama was ready to strike out on her own after high school, let alone once she finished college.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t still under her parents’ umbrella, if not always their roof.
It “was a lot of work” keeping daughters Malia, who’s turning 28 on July 4, and Sasha Obama, 25, out of the tabloids when they were kids, Michelle Obama admitted in April 2025 on SiriusXM’s Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa, “and it got harder as they got older.”
The former first lady explained, “They had to drive and they had to go to prom and they were on teams and they traveled to other schools and they had to do college searches, and they went to parties and they had drinks, and they tried out smoking and they did all the things—and every weekend was a nightmare, because we had to work to make sure that them being regular teenagers didn’t wind up on Page Six.”
But while the Obamas—who most recently were all together publicly at the June 18 opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago—were under the most glaring spotlight in the land, being a first kid wasn’t exactly a negative in the grand scheme of things.
Even though Malia Ann has since dropped the Obama from her professional moniker.
“We call that the Obama tax for them,” Michelle quipped. “You’ll have it the rest of your life, but you also have a lot of benefits.”
She added, “I’m trying to make this feel normal to them, because you don’t want them to start thinking, number one, they’re full of themselves, that any of this is about them and that their job is to go about their lives.”
Kent NISHIMURA / AFP via Getty Images
After committing to Harvard following her graduation from Sidwell Friends School in Washington D.C., Malia spent a gap year traveling and interning in New York, almost like a normal kid, not counting the Secret Service escort.
She started off with a trip to Liberia and Morocco in July 2016 with Sasha, their mom and grandmother Marian Robinson to promote the Let Girls Learn Initiative. The Obama family went on their usual summer getaway to Martha’s Vineyard.
And toward the end of that year, Malia spent 83 days in Peru and Bolivia, where she lived with a family in the town of Tiquipaya, a trip so unpublicized that no one knew she was gone until after she got back to the U.S.
“She was very humble, chatty, spoke Spanish very well,” Gregorio Mamani, one of the guides on a five-day hike Malia took through the Cordillera Real mountain range, told The New York Times. “She was mesmerized by the Bolivian landscape.” Minus the added security, all of those on the excursion were expected to look after themselves and Malia reportedly acquitted herself admirably, doing her share of the cooking and other chores.
And when it was time for Michelle and Barack Obama to drop their eldest child off at Harvard, “I was proud that I did not cry in front of her,” the former president said at an event about a month after moving Malia into her dorm. “But on the way back, the Secret Service was looking straight ahead pretending they weren’t hearing me as I sniffled and blew my nose. It was rough.”
Malia wasn’t the first-ever daughter of a former U.S. president to enroll at the storied Ivy League institution in Cambridge, Mass., but Caroline Kennedy in the 1970s didn’t have to deal with social media in the residence hall where Facebook was created.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
There’s been no such thing as a presidency that didn’t exist under a microscope—Chelsea Clinton left for Stanford just in time, in the fall of 1997—but a lot of the mundane daily scrutiny usually saved for the president himself broadened to encompass the first lady and their children at an unprecedented level during the Obama years.
“When your kids are under the security of the Secret Service, you almost have to work twice as hard to make their life normal,” Michelle reflected to Kelly Ripa. “Imagine setting up the first play date or the first time the kids get invited to a play date. The process of having my children at your house meant that an advanced team had to come and question and search your house and ask if you had drugs and guns.”
No stranger to attention because their dad was the president, Jenna Bush Hager and twin sister Barbara Bush offered some words of wisdom to the Obama sisters in 2017 about navigating life after the White House.
“Enjoy college. As most of the world knows, we did,” they wrote in an open letter. “And you won’t have the weight of the world on your young shoulders anymore. Explore your passions. Learn who you are. Make mistakes—you are allowed to.”
“Continue to surround yourself with loyal friends who know you, adore you and will fiercely protect you,” the continued. “Those who judge you don’t love you, and their voices shouldn’t hold weight. Rather, it’s your own hearts that matter.”
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Sheltered within the centuries-old walls of Harvard Yard, Malia had for all intents and purposes a very normal college experience, if not for the fame that preceded her. On day one of her freshman year she politely shook the hand of a Boston Globe reporter but declined an interview and wouldn’t offer any first-day-of-school anecdotes, but for the most part she was noticed yet left to her own devices.
Michelle said at a 2018 event that she did give Malia a key piece of advice: “‘Don’t end up on Page Six.’ I don’t know if she managed that.” (As dutifully reported by Page Six.)
Malia didn’t hide from the spotlight—she could be seen tailgating at football games and hanging out with friends, and even going on the occasional date—but she didn’t run toward it, either. And her fellow Crimson let her be, though her off-campus excursions were often snapped by long-lens-toting paparazzi.
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
But there really wasn’t any way that she could make people un-interested in her, whether she was spotted holding a cigarette at the football stadium or wearing braids and workout clothes after Soul Cycle.
“Sometimes we treat our children too preciously because of the issues they’ve dealt with,” Michelle said in November 2017 at the Obama Foundation summit in Chicago, per InStyle. “Barack and I, we thought about with Malia and Sasha, okay, we could’ve spent eight years feeling sorry for them that they were living in a bubble that every misstep for them would be on YouTube, that their privacy, they didn’t have access to their father in a way…We could’ve felt bad for them, and there would’ve been a truth there. But our view was this is their life, and we can’t apologize for the life they have because a whole lot of it is good.”
The Obamas’ hands-on-but-not-with-kid-gloves approach seems to have served both of their relatively drama-free daughters well.
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Both are now out in the world, Sasha graduating from USC in May 2023 and Malia celebrating the premiere of her short film The Heart at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
The budding auteur followed that up by getting behind the camera to direct WNBA star A’ja Wilson’s latest Nike commercial.
“I think she’s so intelligent,” Swarm star Dominique Fishback told E! News in April 2023 of Malia, who was a writer on the Prime Video series. “She’s so cool. I just want to know what she wants to do next.”
And despite being a bold-faced name from day one, Malia wasn’t in for any special treatment, Swarm co-creator Donald Glover—whose company also produced The Heart—assured Vanity Fair.
“We can’t be easy on her just because she’s the president’s daughter,” he cracked. “Nah, she’s very down to earth, and cool. So, it’s not a problem at all.”
And since graduating from Harvard with a degree in Visual and Environmental Studies in 2021, Malia has remained more tight-lipped than a member of the royal family.
Like, queen-level tight-lipped. She avoids interviews, stays out of the kind of trouble that ends up in public records and, if she has a social media presence, reserves it for a closely vetted inner circle.
Their mom highlighted a particularly noticeable change, telling Ellen DeGeneres in April 2022 that both of her daughters had boyfriends—but, as tends to be the case, that was a bit of a misnomer.
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Ellen recalled that she first met Malia and Sasha when their mom brought them to her show to watch the Jonas Brothers perform before the 2008 election.
“Now they’re bringing grown men home,” Michelle said. “Before it was just a pop band. Now, they have boyfriends and real lives.”
And thanks to Malia’s discrete ways, her real life is all her own.
But since they do indeed grow up so fast, take a stroll down memory lane with Malia and Sasha Obama through the years:
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picture alliance / Contributor / GETTY IMAGES
Boston Globe / Contributor / GETTY IMAGES
© Pete Souza/The White House/ZUMAPRESS.com
AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
AP Photo/Luigi Costantini
Everett Collection
JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images
AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Mike Theiler-Pool/Getty Images
Kevin Mazur/WireImage
Kent Nishimura-Pool/Getty ImagesBrooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images
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Kent Nishimura-Pool/Getty Images
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Charles Ommanney/Getty Images
Scott Olson/Getty Images
(Originally published July 2, 2018, at 12:55 p.m. PT)
