First lady Michelle Obama lovingly praised her husband Tuesday night in a prime-time Democratic Convention speech as a devoted husband and caring father at home and a “man we can trust” to revive the nation’s weak economy as president, beckoning the country to return him to the White House despite agonizingly slow recovery from recession.

“He reminds me that we are playing a long game here … and that change is hard, and change is slow and it never happens all at once,” she told a nation impatient with slow economic progress and persistently high unemployment of 8.3 percent. “But eventually, we get there, we always do,” she said in a speech that blended scenes from 23 years of marriages with the Obamas’ time in the White House.

Mrs. Obama, given a huge ovation and describing herself as the “mom in chief,” made no mention of Republican challenger Mitt Romney. But those who preceded her to the podium on the first night of the president’s convention were scathing.

Mrs. Obama’s poll numbers are better than her husband’s, and her speech was aimed at building support for him, much as Ann Romney’s remarks at last week’s Republican National Convention were in service to her husband’s presidential ambitions.

“When it comes to rebuilding our economy, Barack is thinking about folks like my dad — who worked at a municipal water plant — and his own grandmother, a bank secretary,” the first lady said.

Referring to her own children as well as those of others, she said,

“If we want to give them that sense of limitless possibility, that belief that here in America there is always something better out there if you are willing to work for it, then we must … stand together for the man we can trust to keep moving this great country forward, my husband, our president, President Barack Obama.”

The weak economy hung over the convention as it dominates the election.

Obama “knows better than anyone there’s more hard work to do” to fix it said Castro. He said that after the deep recession, the nation is making progress “despite incredible odds and united Republican opposition.”