Making a name for yourself outside of being the president’s child is no easy feat, but the eldest former first daughter, Malia Obama, has certainly risen to the occasion. She began attending Harvard University in the fall of 2017, taking a gap year before investing in her profession. Moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in screenwriting, she’s gone on to intern for Lena Dunham on her HBO series Girls, eventually landing her first job as a writer on Donald Glover’s Amazon series, Swarm.
What does she do in her off time? Seen attending music festivals and coffee dates with friends, the 25-year-old has a bustling social life that includes dating, too. She’s most recently been linked to Dawit Eklund, and seems to be pretty head over heels in love. So, who is Malia Obama’s boyfriend?
Who Is Dawit Eklund?
The co-founder of indie record label 1432 R, Eklund was previously based in Washington D.C., where Malia lived while her father served his two terms as president. He studied international development at George Washington University, having spent time living in Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Kenya, Sudan and many other places due to his father’s job as a State Department officer.
He’s since relocated to Los Angeles, where he and Obama have been spotted on many under-the-radar dates since July 2022. Like her father, Malia’s new beau has one parent from Africa and the other from America, and even resembles him a bit from his younger days.
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She Previously Dated Rory Farquharson
This certainly isn’t Obama’s first slightly publicized relationship. She was linked to Harvard University classmate Rory Farquharson for quite a while, and it was the first time the world witnessed the precious first daughter all grown up and in her first relationship.
British Harvard alum Farquharson lives relatively offline, though photos of the couple showing off their street style while strutting down Soho showed he was just as artistic as he was intellectual. Coming from a well-off family in the UK, he and Obama were able to relate to many alienating aspects of coming from an elite family. Like many college relationships, though, the two fizzled out soon after graduation.
While it may have been jarring for the world to see her in her first relationship, former president Barack Obama took it pretty easy. He even allowed Farquharson to quarantine with them during lockdown, sharing on The Bill Simmons Podcast, “There was this whole visa thing, he had a job set up, and so we took him in,” he shared, adding, “And I didn’t want to like him, but he’s a good kid.”
Eklund Is Older Than Her
While Obama turned 25 in July of 2023, Eklund is 34, which is almost a decade of age difference. However, being raised in a global spotlight from a young age, Obama has undoubtedly matured beyond her years. Eklund also witnessed a lot in those 34 years, as his father Jon Eklund was heavily involved in helping the refugee crisis caused by the war in Sudan in the early 2000s, when hundreds of thousands fled to Ethiopia to escape the fighting.
In the meantime, Eklund has been named “one of Washington’s most exciting dance music producers” by The Washington Post, adding: “It’s not because he’s splicing styles from around the globe, it’s because he spent a lot of his young life learning how to communicate with different kinds of people.”
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