Barack and Michelle Obama discuss their first date. Source: ITN
The woman who Barack Obama proposed to - twice - before he met Michelle was seen quietly getting on with academic life this week after revelations about their relationship emerged in a new presidential biography.
Sheila Miyoshi Jager, 53, appeared in good spirits as she walked with a female friend on the campus of liberal arts Oberlin College where she is a professor of East Asian studies.
Jager revealed she was the former president's first love in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama by Pulitzer prize-winning biographer David J. Garrow.
She shared secrets of their relationship including that she continued to see Obama on and off for at least a year after he met the First Lady.
Sheila Jager is an author and college professor. Photo / Oberlin College
Her husband, Jiyul Kim, said that his wife did not wish to speak about the book when contacted by DailyMail.com at their home.
Jager, who is of Dutch and Japanese descent, received her Ph.D in anthropology from the University of Chicago, where she was studying in the mid '80s when she met Barack Obama, then a community organiser.
The couple dated for a couple of years and met each other's families before splitting up.
Yet Jager was almost entirely omitted from Obama's own biography, Dreams of My Father, where she was simply combined with his other white exes into one character.
According to Rising Star she played a huge role in Obama's formative years. So much so that even after Barack met his wife-to-be Michelle, he kept seeing Jager on and off for at least a year, the book claims.
The couple were very much in love in the late-1980s when they were living together in Chicago, according to Jager, who described them as being "an island unto ourselves".
They even had a cat together named Max.
Their relationship quickly progressed and in the winter of 1986, while visiting Sheila's parents, Barack popped the question, Jager told Garrow.
But Jager's parents were concerned that she was too young - Jager was 23 and Obama was 25 - and she had to turn down his proposal.
They remained together, and Jager began to realise her then-boyfriend's "deep-seated need to be loved and admired".
Jager told Garrow that Obama became "so very ambitious very suddenly".
"I remember very clearly when this transformation happened, and I remember very specifically that by 1987, about a year into our relationship, he already had his sights on becoming president."
"Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama," by David J. Garrow. Image / William Morrow
But Obama believed he needed to "fully identify as African American" to fulfill his political ambitions - and believed that having a non-black spouse could damage his prospects, according to the book.
This reportedly put pressure on Obama's relationship with Jager who is of Dutch and Japanese heritage.
By the time he was getting set to leave for Harvard Law School, their relationship was rocky.
But Obama was not ready to give up on Jager, and proposed to her for a second time - asking her to join him in Harvard.
Again Jager turned him down.
She believed that his proposal was "out of a sense of desperation over our eventual parting and not in any real faith in our future".
According to Garrow, Obama made emotional judgments on political grounds. A close mutual friend of the couple recalls Obama being concerned about running for president with a white wife.
But she refused to accept his rationale, writes the author, the fact that it was ultimately her race that would prevent them from being together.
In the days before Barack left Chiacgo for Harvard the couple joined friends Jerry and Kellman for a farewell dinner. They had a question for their friends.
"Could you please keep the cat?," they asked.
The Kellmans agreed to give Max a home, Sheila explaining to the author, "Barack was not sad to give Max away."
The book claims that Barack kept on seeing Jager for the first year he was dating Michelle - in the 1990-91 academic year- but said it stopped after the couple married in 1992.
It is also possible that Obama cheated on Jager with an Hispanic single mother of three he had met through his work as a community organiser. Garrow says that Mary Ellen 'Lena' Montes became an "intimate friend".
She was a divorced young mother who had become a prominent activist in Chicago.
In the August after Obama first moved to Chicago, Jager visited her family and he spent time with Lena.
"Obama would remember some intense making-out," Garrow writes, "while Lena explained: 'I'm a passionate person'."
After he moved in with Jager, Lena had the impression that it was "because of convenience".
Indeed, her existence may have precipitated his split from Jager, as Garrow recalls how after an argument, she found Obama's journal under his bed and looked through it.
She was upset about "someone" in the journal, Lena recalled later - although Lena did not know if she was the person Jager was upset about.
"I just remember him saying that she was leaving... because of this journal," Lena said.
Regardless of whether he was faithful to Jager, Obama went to law school then met Michelle. The couple quickly fell for each other and began dating.
But Garrow claims that Jager and Barack continued to see each other on and off after she arrived at Harvard for a teaching fellowship. Garrow describes Obamas as having "two powerful, overlapping relationships".
"I always felt bad about it," Jager said.
After Barack and Michelle married in 1992, Jager says that they stopped seeing each other and their contact was limited to the odd letter or phone call.
Sheila had met a 33-year-old Korean-American graduate student and US Army office Jiyul Kim from Boston.
"Sheila's relationship with Jiyul quickly began to blossom just as Barack's final weeks of law school approached," Garrow writes.
Sheila told the author, "As much as I loved him [Barack] I was relieved when our paths finally parted."
She added, "I travelled to some really dark places during that period of my life."
Jager is a sought-after expert on the Korean peninsula and has written a number of books on the subject.
The professor has lived quietly in the pretty college town of Oberlin, Ohio for the past 20 years. She is married to retired Army veteran, Col. Jiyul Kim, who is also a professor at Oberlin specialising in military history in East Asia and US foreign policy.
Kim, 59, served in the US Army for three decades and was on duty at the Pentagon during 9/11.
The couple have three children. Their eldest son, Isaac, 23, graduated from West Point military academy last year, according to social media, while their daughter, Hannah, 21, attends Oberlin College.
The Obamas have not publicly responded to the claims in the book.
