WASHINGTON - Michelle Obama, who will become America's next first lady on January 20, opened up about how she first met her husband, a 'no-frills guy,' in a television interview broadcast on Thursday.

'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,' Mrs Michelle Obama told CNN.

'He always has and always will be a kind of no-frills guy.'

When she first learned about her future husband, she 'probably did what a lot of people do when they hear about Barack Obama. First, I thought, what kind of a name is Barack Obama?' Mrs Michelle Obama told CNN.

'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.'

But when she got to know Mr Obama better after he was hired at Chicago law firm Sidley Austin, where she worked, Mrs Michelle Obama said: 'we clicked right away'.

'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,' she said.

'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.' Mr Obama also stood out for his laid-back style, his wife added.

'He came out of a community-organising 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.'

Mrs Michelle Obama remarked that her husband, who 'hasn't changed much over the years', is not 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.'