Didn't think of Barack as one I would want to date: Michelle on first meeting

New Delhi: Michelle Obama found future-husband Barack refreshing, unconventional and weirdly elegant when she saw him for the first time but not once did she think about him as someone she would want to date.

Barack Obama also turned up late when he went to meet Michelle for working as her associate at a Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin in 1989.

"Despite my resistance to the hype that had preceded him, I found myself admiring Barack for both his self-assuredness and his earnest demeanour. He was refreshing, unconventional, and weirdly elegant," Michelle says about what she felt when she saw Barack for the first time at the law firm. But she hastens to add, "Not once, though, did I think about him as someone I'd want to date. For one thing, I was his mentor at the firm. I'd also recently sworn off dating altogether, too consumed with work to put any effort into it."

She thought that he would be just a good summer mentee.

And finally, appallingly, at the end of lunch that day, Barack lit a cigarette, "which would have been enough to snuff any interest, if I'd had any to begin with".

Smoking wasn't something Michelle liked. According to her, Barack smoked the way her parents did after meals, walking down a city block, or when he was feeling anxious and needed to do something with his hands.

"Smoking was one topic where Barack's logic seemed to leave him altogether," she says.

But slowly things started to change.

"I think we should go out," Barack announced one afternoon as they sat finishing a meal. "What, you and me?" Michelle feigned shock that he even considered it a possibility. "I told you, I don't date. And I'm your adviser," was her argument.

Barack gave a wry laugh. "Like that counts for anything. You're not my boss, he said. And you're pretty cute.