Radar introduces you to the next president's relatives

By now, there's no way you haven't soaked up the life stories of this year's presumptive presidential nominees. There's Barack Obama, the multiracial child of a Kansan mother and a Kenyan father who shocked the world with his improbable rise to the top spot in the Democratic party. Then there's John McCain, the war hero who endured five years of torture as a prisoner of war and then became a "maverick" Republican senator. During this entire bruising, ongoing election season, these two tales have been repeated incessantly. Yet for all we know about the candidates, we know precious little about their immediate and extended families. What do their brothers and sisters do? Who are their children? Perhaps most pressing, do they get along with their mothers-in-law? Let's take a look at these two tribes. Remember, you're going to be stuck with one of them for the next four years.

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BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, JR.

Wife: Michelle Obama
Born Michelle Robinson on January 17, 1964, Barack Obama's wife comes from humble beginnings. Raised in a one-bedroom apartment on Chicago's South Shore by a homemaker mother and a city pump-operator father, she graduated cum laude from Princeton University in 1985, and earned her law degree from Harvard in 1988. Following graduation, she accepted a job at Sidley Austin, a prestigious downtown Chicago law firm. In 1989, Michelle was asked to mentor the firm's only other African American, a summer associate by the name of Barack Obama, who had been only one year behind her at Harvard, but whom she had never met.

In 1991, she left the firm to work for Chicago mayor Richard Daley. She and Obama were married in October 1992. Michelle Obama has held a number of high-ranking public service jobs, most recently as a senior official in the University of Chicago Hospitals system, which earned her a reported salary of nearly $275,000 a year. In 1998, she gave birth to the couple's first daughter, Malia. Daughter Natasha, nicknamed Sasha, followed in 2001. Once her husband began campaigning in earnest for the presidency, Michelle started to scale back her professional duties, and eventually left her post at the University of Chicago Hospitals to help him get elected.

Daughters: Malia and Sasha Obama, ages 10 and 7, respectively
The Obamas have largely kept their two daughters out of the political spotlight, stating a desire to keep their lives as normal as possible. In the earlier days of the campaign, this required that Michelle's schedule allow her to fix breakfast in the morning and tuck them into bed at night. When both parents are on the road stumping, Michelle's mother, Marian Robinson, watches over them in the Obamas' Chicago home. Barack has characterized Malia as "wise and thoughtful" and Sasha as "the comedian."

Though the Obama girls are shielded from the rigors of campaigning, they are not entirely unaware of what is happening around their family. Last summer, when the "Obama Girl" videos started making their way around the Web and on the news, a then six-year-old Sasha Obama reportedly asked her mom about it, stating, "Daddy already has a wife." At the same time, Malia Obama patiently waited for her father's schedule to allow them to finish the last Harry Potter book together. She was quoted in a New York Times article as telling her mother, "When Daddy has time, we'll finish. This isn't a race." At the end of Barack Obama's campaign, however, they do have a prize for their patience. Win or lose, the girls have been promised a dog.