Referencing date in another cell in text

Here's what I am trying to do:

In cell A1, I have a date "6/1/2008"
In A3, I want it to say "The date A1 is in the middle".

In A3, I put:

="The date " & A1 & " is in the middle."

but this returns the number that Excel uses to calculate the dates, which in this case is an integer over 30,000. So everything comes out fine except for the date. Is there a way to keep the date formatted as a date when calling it this way?

Thanks,
Will