London, January 2 : U. S. President-elect Barack Obama's wife, Michelle, says that he has been a straightforward person throughout his life.

She has revealed that her husband was a "no-frills guy" when she first met him, and that his nature remains the same to date.

"He didn''t care about what other people thought and how he looked, and he was not into fashion but he was very much into issues. He cared more about the work that he was doing in the community than how he looked," the Telegraph quoted her as telling CNN in an interview.

"He always has and always will be a kind of no-frills guy," added Michelle, who will become the First Lady on January 20.

She even revealed that her first reaction after learning about her future husband at the time was "what kind of a name is Barack Obama".

"My assumption was, this guy''s got to be a little weird. Probably a little nerdy. I''d already created an image of this very intellectual image of this nerd," she said.

However, she got to know Obama better after he was hired at Chicago law firm Sidley Austin, where she worked.

"We clicked right away," she said.

"He told me more about his background, and he fleshed it out a bit more. I found out that his father was from Kenya, his mother was a white woman from Kansas and that he had spent part of his life in Indonesia.

"He was funny. He was self-deprecating. He didn''t take himself too seriously. He was very down to earth despite having come from this very exotic background compared to mine," she added.

Michelle said that she was also impressed by Obama's laid-back style.

"He came out of a community-organizing background, right? So that wasn''t, you know, Wall Street-button-down wearing suits," she said.

"You were working in communities, and you were, you know, working with single-parent mothers and grandparents raising grandchildren," she said.

She further said that her husband had not " changed much over the years," and would not be too concerned about his appearance.

"Barack still has the same pants and shirts that he had when we got married, which is why I crack up when people say he is one of the best dressed men," she said.

"I think that maybe that means like he looks good in his clothes because he is tall and thin, but if you look up close, the pants have a hole in the back. And the shoes, I looked at them the other day and I said, you need new shoes," she added. (ANI)