After she strongly suggested that her husband run for govenror, Sue Snyder sort of sat back to watch what would happen, never thinking that, eventually, she would find her own voice as first lady of Michigan.

“I guess I just didn’t think about what my role would be. I would just be in the background and he would be governor,” she recalls during the taping of her final TV interview with her husband on “Evening with the Governor” on Michigan Public TV.

To underscore her mindset, when she first met with her staff, they asked her, “What do you want to do?”

Her vague response was, “What do you want me to do?” as she was not thinking about what she wanted to do.

A key player offered her some advice.

“Actully, Michelle Engler (a former first lady herself) quielty suggested, ‘Take six months. Don’t jump into anything and go for something you have a passion for,'” the current first lady recalled.

That one Mrs. Snyder could answer. As a private citizen, she was already involved with Elle’s Place, based in Ann Arbor and now with a home in Lansing. The nonprofit offered services to children who were grieving from the loss of a parent or parents.

Then, out of the blue came a request she had not anticipated.

“Honey, what would you think about doing a year-end TV interview with Tim Skubick?”

The answer was a quick and resounding, “No.”

“I talked her into it,” the governor laughs as he tells the backstory on how it came to be. She would appear not once but six times on the series that traditonally features a year-end exchange with the governor and first lady, dating back to the Milliken years.

During the first taping, she watched intently from the green room as the governor and anchor guy went back and forth in a sometimes pointed exchange that had her thinking, “I don’t want to go out there.”

But she did and the rest is history. She was much like former first lady Helen Milliken who had never done TV and had to be coaxed into doing “Off the Record.” After that, she launched into a very public and hands-on role of pushing the Equal Rights Amendment, environmental, and other issues.

Mrs. Snyder survived the first encounter and began to find her public voice, aided by her youngest daughter.

The two of them were discussing sexual abuse on campus at the University of Michigan and it struck the first lady that she could do something about this using her platform, and she did. There were state appropriations of $500,000 and more, summit meetings drawing hundreds of attendees.

“What people don’t understand is I started this movement in 2015. They think I’ve just come on board with this” in this post-Larry Nassar climate, Sue Snyder said. Turns out, she was ahead of the curve and the Nassar ordeal “raised the visibility of the issue … It is prevalent and we have to change the culture surrounding it. That magnified it.”

Having watched her husband battle one issue after another, including the Flint water crisis that had a deep impact on the first family, the first lady comes to one conclusion: “I know why you are governor and I’m not,” she looks him in the eye, sitting next to her with a smile.

Asked if she would have made a lousy governor, she concurs. She would not have remained as “positive” as her husband through all that. “Relentless Positive Action” would not have been her motto.

And, come to find out, Mrs. Snyder was ready to leave office a year ago.

“Maybe,” she sheepishly concedes the point.

In their final words to a statewide TV audience, the governor first thanks his family.

“She and the kids put up with all this,” he reflects now, looking her in the eyes. “We got great benefits, but its something we did as a family that she doesn’t get credit for.”

He then thanks the citizens.

“I can always say wonderful things to the people of Michigan. Let me say thank you for the opportunity to serve.”

And she readily agrees as she reflects on the “wonderful people and many great friends” they have met, not to mention the “many cool places” they had visited over eight years.

And, in her final words, she comes close to tears as she reveals, “It’s going to be sad. It really is.”