Millions watched President Barack Obama deliver his seventh and final State of the Union Address Tuesday night, but a handful of Texans sat with the First Lady, invited as special guests. 

In a non-traditional move, President Obama did not go over specific proposals or plans for his last year in office. Instead, he talked about the country’s future beyond 2016 and his presidency.

“I don’t just want to talk about next year, I want to focus on the next five years, the next ten years and beyond,” the president said.

President Obama said there are four big questions the country has to answer, “regardless of who the next president is, or who controls the next Congress.”

The first question, the president asked, “How to we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy?”

“We have to make college affordable for every American,” Obama said as people in the crowd stood and cheered. Over the applause the president said, “No hard working student should be stuck in the red.” 

President Obama said and the best way to make college affordable is to make the first two years of community college free for responsible students. “And I’m going to keep fighting to get that started this year… It’s the right thing to do,” President Obama said.

During another standing ovations, camera filming the nationally televised event zoomed in on the woman seated right behind First Lady Michelle Obama.  

“That would change my life completely I would be getting the associate’s degree in two years,” said Jenny Bragdon.

Texas’ own, Bragdon is the face of the president’s initiative to cut the cost of college. 

A student at Austin Community College, Bragdon is working toward a degree to become a middle school math teacher. She enrolled at ACC last January, six months after her daughter was born. “I want to parent from my successes and not, ‘I wish I could have done this…’” Bragdon said.

A year later, she’s finished one semester of classes and she hopes to graduate by the time her daughter gets to the third grade.

According to her own calculations, it will take Bragdon about a decade to earn a four-year degree.

“When you’re both working full time jobs and you live simply and you’re just making enough to cover the minimum of your bills, it really does leave you feeling trapped,” Bragdon said.

The 42-year-old said she always planned on going to college and the plan was that she would go to school after her husband got his degree, but life got in the way. The couple was deep in debt, buried by her husband’s student loans, and Bragdon said it just didn’t make sense for her to go back to school.

Then, life threw another “surprise” their way, Bragdon gave birth to her first child at the age of 40. That was the final push she needed and 20 years after she graduated high school, Bragdon went to college.

“I wanted to parent from a place where I could say yes, I did this because it was my dream and this is what I wanted to do,” Bragdon said.

She doesn’t think the president’s plan to make the first two years of community college free will happen in time to help her, but she hopes it will be an option at some point because college won’t be a question for her daughter.

“As soon as she’s done with high school she’s going to college, whatever we have to do to make that happen,” Bragdon said, ““I don’t want finances to limit her dreams so I’d like to be able to provide for her comfortably so we will be sending her to college no matter what.”

According to the projections from the Obama-administration, free community college would benefit roughly 9 million students each year, if all 50 states participate in the program. The federal government would cover three quarters of the cost and the states that partake would picked up the rest.

Second  Lady Dr. Jill Biden visited ACC in March, when she first met Bragdon. Dr. Biden called Bragdon Thursday to invite her to Tuesday night’s event. That didn’t leave a lot of time to prepare, but Bragdon said she knew right away what she wanted to wear—a dress that belonged to her husband’s grandmother, something she wore to campaign events for the democratic party in the 1960’s and 70’s.

Bragon said it was surreal to meet the president and watch her daughter dance in the White House.  “He’s so incredibly kind, it was amazing,” Bragdon said of President Obama. 

The meeting was brief, Bragdon said, but her daughter got a lot of attention. “They taught her a new word which is ‘Obama,’ she’s 18-months and she’s just starting to say a couple of words and all morning it’s been ‘Obama, Obama’ it’s really cute,” Bragdon said. 

Meet the other Texans invited to watch the State of the Union Address from the First Lady’s box:

·        Maj. Lisa Jaster, of Houston, Texas, one of the first women who graduated from U.S.  Army Ranger School.

·        Earl Smith, of Austin, Texas, is a veteran who first met then-Sen. Obama in 2008 when he worked security at the Austin Hyatt Regency Hotel. Smith gave Obama a military patch he had worn serving with an artillery brigade in Vietnam that sustained 10,041 casualties and 13 Medals of Honor. The president will donate the patch to the Obama Presidential Library, the White House says.

·        Oscar Vazquez, of Fort Worth, Texas, came to the United States as a child but had to return to Mexico to get a visa to return to the United States and enlist in the Army. He served in Afghanistan. He is now a citizen of the United States.