Ruth Nidesand: Truth about the ex-wife of Barack Obama Sr. 

Who is Ruth Nidesand?

Ruth Nidesand was the ex-wife of Barack Obama Sr.She was also known as Ruth Beatrice Baker. Ruth Nidesand was a Kenyan senior governmental economist and the father of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States. He is a central figure in his son’s memoir, Dreams from My Father.

Ruth Nidesand: Bio Summary

Full Name	Ruth Nidesand
Birth	Ruth Beatrice Baker
famous as	ex-wife of Barack Obama Sr
Age	86 years old as of 2023
Date of Birth	1937
Place of Birth	United States of America
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	Black
Siblings	Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo,  David Ndesandjo, Joseph Ndesandjo
spouse	Barack Obama Sr. (m. 1964–1973)

Ruth Nidesand was born in the United States around 1937.  She is the daughter of Maurice Joseph Baker and Ida Baker, who was from Massachusetts and are of Lithuanian-Jewish descent. As of 2023, she is 86 years old.

Barack Obama Sr.’s ex-wife, Ruth was a suburban elementary school teacher. She graduated from Brookline High School in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1954. She also graduated from Simmons College in Boston with a degree in business in 1958. 

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How did Barack Obama Sr and his ex-wife Ruth Nidesand meet?

Ruth Nidesand met Barack Obama Sr when she was in Cambridge in June 1964 and they began dating a month before Barack returns to Kenya in August 1964. Ruth followed him to Kenya five weeks later and they got married in Kenya in a civil ceremony on 24 December 1964. She became his third wife. Ruth later became a director in a private kindergarten in Kenya. 

The couple had two sons; Mark Okoth Obama and David Opiyah Obama. In 1971 the couple separated and decided to end it all in 1973. Ruth got married again so her children bore her new husband’s surname. She gave birth to her third child Joseph Ndesanjo in 1980 with her second husband. 

Ruth’s son, Mark Ndesanjo revealed in his semi-autobiographical novel that Ruth’s husband abused her. He said, “My father beat my mother and my father beat me, and you don’t do that,”. He told Association Press (AP), saying he wrote from Nairobi to Shenzhen in part to raise awareness of domestic violence. 

“It’s something which I think affected me for a long time, and it’s something that I’ve just recently come to terms with.”

With tears in his eyes, he added: “I remember situations when I was growing up, and there would be a light coming from our living room, and I could hear thuds.

“I could hear thuds and screams, and my father’s voice and my mother shouting. I remember one night when she ran out into the street and she didn’t know where to go.”

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Barack Hussein Obama Sr: Ruth Nidesand’s ex-husband.

As said earlier, Barack Hussein Obama Sr was a Kenyan senior governmental economist and the husband of Ruth Nidesand. He was born in Rachuonyo District, Nyang’oma Kogelo, British Kenya. 

He was the son of Hussein Onyango Obama and Habiba Akumu Nyanjango. His parents were members of the Luo ethnic group. He had two biological sisters. Ruth’s ex-husband was the father of the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama, and seven others. 

Ruth’s ex-husband was selected for a special program to attend college in the United States and studied at the University of Hawaii. He later went to Harvard University for graduate school, where earned an M.A. in economics and he returned to Kenya in 1964.

Obama Sr married four times when he was alive. He first married Kezia Aoko at the age of 20 in 1954. They had two children Malik Roy Obama and Auma Obama. 

Obama Sr met Stanley Ann Dunham when he was a student at the University of Hawai’i, the two dated and got married on 2 February 1961 on the Hawaiian Island of Maul despite their families not in support. They gave birth to a son, future US president, Barack Obama in August 1961. They separated and divorced on 20 March 1964, his ex-wife was the sole guardian of their son.   

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Obama Sr graduated in 1962 from the University of Hawaii. He met his third wife Ruth Nidesand at Harvard University when he went there for a doctoral program in economics, they started dating. She followed him to Kenya in 1964 and they got married later that year and had two sons.

They got separated in 1971 and got divorced in 1973. Ruth Nidesand’s ex-husband married another woman, Jael Otinyo. They gave birth to his last son George in 1982. His son was six months when he died in a car accident.