Michelle Obama had expectations for her first visit to Hawaii with then-boyfriend Barack Obama, and the future president shattered them all.

The former first lady told Jimmy Kimmel that she was a second-year law associate dreading another Chicago winter when Obama invited her to meet his grandparents, “Toot” (Madelyn Dunham) and “Gramps” (Stanley Dunham), for Christmas in Hawaii.

She had never been but had seen the iconic “Brady Bunch” episodes there. She pictured leis and hula dancing and anticipated cocktails and long beach walks. But the reality proved entirely different. “I don’t see a beach anywhere. I don’t see Greg Brady. I see nothing that I was expecting,” the “Becoming” author recalled.

She said she quickly became entrenched in Toot and Gramps’ routine. On TV trays, they ate tuna and sweet-pickle sandwiches two days a row. They did jigsaw puzzles and watched “60 Minutes” on the third. And all she kept thinking was, “Dude, where’s the romantic stuff?” she said until she had an epiphany.

“I thought romance and love was mai tais and sunsets on the beach, but Barack was showing me that family was important, that he showed up for his family, and he continued to show up for our family in the same way,” Obama said. Her anecdote came from her new book, “The Light We Carry,” and a chapter called “Partnering Well.”

Barack and Michelle Obama spent eight years in the White House, modeling a loving, happy relationship for the country and world. But their love story goes back way further than that, to their days at a Chicago law firm that eventually led to a first date, a family, and a partnership admired by millions.

In 1989, Michelle Robinson, a 25-year-old attorney at the Chicago firm of Sidley Austin, was tasked with showing the new guy, Barack Obama, around. “Because I went to Harvard, and he went to Harvard, and the firm thought, Oh, we’ll hook these two people up,” she told ABC News. “So, you know, there was a little intrigue, but I must say after about a month, Barack, about a month in, asked me out, and I thought, No way. This is completely tacky.”

“Not once, though, did I think about him as someone I’d want to date,” she wrote in her memoir, Becoming. “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.” Eventually, they go on that date, which involves ice cream, a long walk, and a movie. A fictionalized version of the day was turned into a film: Southside With You.

“We clicked right away…by the end of the date, it was over…I was sold,” Michelle said. Meanwhile, Barack told O, “I treated her to the finest ice cream Baskin-Robbins had to offer, our dinner table doubling as the curb. I kissed her, and it tasted like chocolate.”

After two years of dating, Barack and Michelle got engaged on July 31, 1991. Obviously, she said yes, and the couple got married on October 3, 1992.