Michelle Obama recently shared an anecdote about how she came to the rescue of a friend who began choking during a dinner outing.
The former first lady recounted the incident on her podcast, “IMO,” which she co-hosts with her brother, Craig Robinson. Comedian Kevin Hart joined them for the episode, which was released on Wednesday.
During a discussion about health emergencies, Obama casually mentioned her quick-thinking actions.
“I performed the Heimlich maneuver on one of my girlfriends during dinner,” Obama recounted, leaving Robinson visibly impressed.
She went on to describe the setting: she was dining alongside her friend, her daughter Malia Obama, and two of Malia’s companions.
“We’re the same age and you know, you start having… swallowing problems,” Obama said.
“Things just stop. But she had chewed her food — she had told me before that she had this esophageal issue where things will get stuck, so I knew that about her.”
At one point during the dinner, the woman stood up and coughed, Obama said.
“I think she coughed up something, and it got stuck in her throat,” she recalled. “She was straining, and I said, ‘Are you OK?’” to which the woman shook her head.
Obama then positioned herself behind her friend and began performing the Heimlich maneuver.
“I had never done the Heimlich before, and it dislodged it. It just popped up right away,” she said.
Once everything was fine, Obama turned her attention to her daughter and the two friends, who had “pushed away from the table” when the incident began.
“I looked at the kids and I was like, ‘What were you all doing?’” she asked them.
“They were like, ‘You’re right,’” Obama said. “‘We were useless.’ They realized that that was a mother moment.”
Hart quipped that the tale wasn’t just a “casual story.”
“That’s one you’ve got to pull out at some dinners. That’s actually a story,” he said.
“Yeah, I saved a life,” Obama responded.