In Barack Obama’s old Toyota, during the car rides between Chicago and Madison, Wis., the U.S. presidential-hopeful and a professor at Binghamton University talked about practically everything.

“He told me about his views. Writing a novel was very important to him,” Douglas Glick, a linguistics professor and New York city native, said. “He told me a lot about his background. Like a good politician, he repeated himself. That’s a long ride.”

Glick said he doesn’t remember exactly which summer it was that he and Obama frequented the two-and-a-half-hour trip down I-90, likely 1988 or 1989. He was a grad student at the University of Chicago at the time, and Obama, working as a legal aide and doing community service, was considering Harvard Law School, where he later graduated in 1991. They had met through a mutual friend who was teaching at the University of Wisconsin, the same friend that the two made the trek to visit. Sometimes they would travel with other friends, sometimes alone.

But throughout their friendship, there was one thing Obama wouldn’t share: his grandmother’s recipe for tuna fish salad.

Obama wanted to learn how to use a Macintosh computer, and Glick offered to teach him. For lunch at Obama’s Chicago apartment, near the University of Chicago, Obama made the sandwich, but never relinquished the family secret.

“It was pretty amazing,” Glick said. “I remember trying to get the recipe out of him, and I was never able to. I really tried to, and somehow he’d change the topic.”

Obama was the same thoughtful person he appears to be today, according to Glick. He said the media portrayal of Obama is actually accurate, besides radical questions regarding his religion and ties to extremists. The younger Obama, Glick said, was one of the brightest people he has ever met, with “incredible integrity and charisma,” and he doesn’t believe that Obama has changed since — aside from a little weight loss.

“He’s very fair-minded,” the professor said. “When I heard of some of the things he was able to do in Chicago politics, I wasn’t surprised … Especially in his ability to mediate between different people, fights and tensions between friends, he was always able to bring people together.”

“I think it’d be great if somebody like that ended up at a negotiating table in the Middle East,” he added.

Obama and Glick have not been in touch for close to two decades. After graduating from Chicago, the BU professor went abroad to Israel and Obama pursued his political career. According to Glick there was no falling out — just a natural separation over time. Glick said he’s enjoyed his connection to someone of Obama’s stature, but that seeing so much of someone he was once close to can be unsettling at times.

“It’s a bit freaky when you know someone’s mannerisms,” he said. “It’s disconcerting … but if anyone can actually change some stuff, I actually think he’s got a shot at it.”