Mother. Mentor. WH resident. Tributes for Marian Robinson, mother of Michelle Obama

On Nov. 4, 2008, as soon-to-be president Barack Obama watched the tally of electoral college votes come in, his mother-in-law Marian Robinson clasped his hand.

"There was a sense of emotion that I could see in people's faces and in my mother-in-law's face," Obama recalled in a post-election interview on CBS' "60 Minutes." "And you had this sense of, well, what's she thinking?"

After Robinson's death on Friday, daughter Michelle Obama, son-in-law Barack Obama, and other family members paid tribute to an extraordinary woman who was perhaps best known by the nation for helping the Obama family at the White House as they cared for their young daughters, Sasha and Malia.

"My mom Marian Robinson was my rock, always there for whatever I needed," Michelle Obama said on the social media platform X. "She was the same steady backstop for our entire family."

Robinson, who kept a low profile in a residence with the brightest of spotlights, died on Friday. She was 86.

Robinson's thoughts at her son-in-law's election to the presidency were later revealed by her daughter, Michelle Obama in her memoir, "Becoming" published more than a decade after that historic night in Chicago.

"Never one to overemote, my mom just gave him a sideways look and shrugged, causing them both to smile," the former first lady writes.

She said her mother described to her "how overcome she’d felt right then, struck just as I’d been by his vulnerability. America had come to see Barack as self-assured and powerful, but my mother also recognized the gravity of the passage, the loneliness of the job ahead. Here was this man who no longer had a father or a mother, about to be elected the leader of the free world."

Robinson occasionally spoke to the press about her time in the White House. "You see, my job here is the easiest one of all: I just get to be Grandma," Robinson told Essence magazine in an interview published in 2012.

But Robinson would later tell CBS News anchor Gayle King in a rare interview that a mother's worry brought her to the nation's capital. "It's pretty difficult let face it. Because I felt like this was going to be a very hard life for both of them," Robinson told King. "I was worried about their safety and I was worried about my grandkids. That's what got me to move to D.C."

She told King she was reticent to speak out publicly while at the White House. "I figured if I didn't say anything, you couldn't say the wrong thing," Robinson said laughing. She said moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was a "huge adjustment."

"I talked them into letting me do my own laundry," Robinson said.

On Friday, her family lauded her reserved approach. "The trappings and glamour of the White House were never a great fit for Marian Robinson....Rather than hobnobbing with Oscar winners or Nobel laureates, she preferred spending her time upstairs with a TV tray, in the room outside her bedroom with big windows that looked out at the Washington Monument."

During her eight years at the White House, the family said she would often sneak outside the gates to buy greeting cards at nearby stores and sometimes other customers would recognize her, saying she resembled the first lady's mother.

"Oh, I get that a lot," she would smile and reply.

"There was and will be only one Marian Robinson," former President Obama said on X, formerly Twitter on Friday. "In our sadness we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life. And we will spend the rest of ours trying to live up to her example."

Reuters contributed to this report.