![EXCLUSIVE: Former First Lady Michelle Obama steps out with friends Bruce Springsteen and wife Patti Scialfa at celebrity restaurant Polo Bar in New York City. The two families have been friends since The Boss campaigned for Barack Obama during his successful run for the White House in 2008. Michelle famously told her President husband he needed to spend more time with Springsteen. Both men have talked about their friendship — fortified in part by the bond between their wives, Michelle and Patti. In the first episode of a podcast, called Renegades, Obama, 59, said he and Springsteen, 71, "grew to trust each other" based on conversations in which they reflected on feeling "invisible" throughout their childhoods. Springsteen sang with a gospel choir at the newly elected president's inauguration in 2009 and later recalled how he thought Obama had the wrong number the first time the Chicago Democrat called him. "And I said, 'OK, let me figure this out. I am a guitar-playing high school graduate from Freehold, New Jersey. And — OK — you want me to do what?" Springsteen said. Over the years, both have realized they had more in common than they initially realized. Namely, that they both felt like outsiders. "I always kept one foot in sort of the blue collar world and one foot in the counter culture world," Springsteen said of growing up in New Jersey. "And I never truly belonged completely in either of them, you know?". 28 Sep 2022 Pictured: Michelle Obama. Photo credit: ZapatA/MEGA TheMegaAgency.com +1 888 505 6342 (Mega Agency TagID: MEGA902427_026.jpg) [Photo via Mega Agency]](https://hollywoodlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/michelle-obama-nyc-mega.jpg?quality=100&w=293)
Malia and Sasha Obama, now 22 and 19, spent their childhood growing up in the White House and being trailed by Secret Service everywhere they went — even on playdates in elementary school. Despite this unconventional upbringing, former First Lady Michelle Obama said on her Spotify podcast that she tried to give them as “normal” childhood as she possibly could. Yes, even when they had guards standing on the sidelines at their peewee basketball games!
When she and her husband, former President Barack Obama, learned that they were heading to the White House in 2008, they had to come up with a new parenting plan, she explained on the August 19 episode of The Michelle Obama Podcast. “It was like, if they’re gonna be normal, we have to be normal parents,” Obama said in conversation with her brother, Craig Robinson. “We made sure they had responsibilities, and so, we had to do things like, institute rules that the housekeepers couldn’t clean the girls’ rooms, and that they had to make up their own beds, and have a set of chores.”
Fostering a sense of normalcy was easier said than done, though. She shared an adorable anecdote about the Secret Service agents who were forced to go to recess in elementary school every day with dozens of wild children. They wound up pushing kids on swings and playing games. Sasha and Malia‘s friends loved the agents so much that they brought them cookies.
Encouraging individuality and not treating Sasha and Malia simply as the First Daughters was also key, the former FLOTUS said. “I think that mom and dad did a good job of recognizing us as individuals,” she told her brother. “And so I’ve tried to do that with Malia and Sasha… I’m trying my best to make sure that Malia and Sasha feel like they’re on the same team, even though they’re two girls. And, all that, their success is each other’s success, that’s all you have. That sibling relationship is special.”
The Michelle Obama Podcast airs Wednesday mornings on Spotify.