July 1991:A Surprise Proposal
Two years later, Barack popped the questionover dinner at a Chicagorestaurant,catching Michelle off-guard as she didn’t think they were on the same page about marriage.
“He reached for my hand and said that as much as he loved me with his whole being, he still didn’t really see the point,” she wrote in her memoirBecoming. “Instantly, I felt the blood rise in my cheeks…Really? We were doing this now?”
After all, the couple had gone back and forth debating the concept of marriage over dinneronly fortheir conversationto cometo a halt whenthe waiter delivered their dessert. Instead of a piece of chocolate cake sitting on Michelle’s dessertplate, however,there wasa dark velvet box with a diamond ring inside.
“Barack looked at me playfully. He’d baited me. It had all been a ruse. It took me a second to dismantle my anger and slide into joyful shock,” she continued. “He’d riled me up because this was the very last time he would invoke his inane marriage argument, ever again, as long as we both should live.”