Barack and Michelle Obama have faced divorce rumors for some time now, but they don’t seem particularly bothered by them. Addressing the rumors directly during a joint appearance on the IMO podcast, Barack and Michelle shared a lot of laughs.
The former president appeared as a guest on the podcast Michelle hosts alongside her brother Craig Robinson. When Barack entered the room, Craig joked, “Wait, you guys like each other?” The former first lady seemed to brush the rumors off, saying, “Oh yeah, the rumor mill.” Meanwhile, Barack continued to make jokes about their alleged divorce.
“It’s my husband, y’all!” Michelle announced on the podcast. In response, Barack joked, “She took me back.” Michelle laughed at the joke but said, “Now, don’t you start.” Barack continued to jokingly lean into the rumors with, “It was touch and go for a while.”
The fact that Barack has attended several events, including President Donald Trump’s inauguration, without his wife has exacerbated the divorce rumors. Craig hinted at this by saying, “It’s so nice to have you both in the same room together.” Michelle agreed, and added that when they’re not together, people assume their marriage must be falling apart.
“I know,” she responded. “‘Cause when we aren’t, folks think we’re divorced.” In reality, Michelle has never even thought of leaving her husband. Though she acknowledged they’ve had “really hard times” during their relationship, those challenges were not a threat to their marriage.
“There hasn’t been one moment in our marriage where I thought about quittin’ my man,” she said. “And we’ve had some really hard times. We have had a lot of fun times, a lot of adventures, and I have become a better person because of the man I’m married to.”
Previously, Michelle addressed the divorce rumors after skipping Trump’s inauguration. At the time, she said she was focused on “making the choice that was right for me.” It had nothing to do with her marriage.
“My decision to skip the inauguration — or my decision to make choices at the beginning of this year that suited me — were met with such ridicule and criticism,” Michelle said on her podcast in April. “People couldn’t believe that I was saying no for any other reason, that they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart.”
After leaving the White House, Michelle has started prioritizing herself more and really thinking about what she wants. “I’m at this stage in life where I have to define my life on my terms for the first time,” she said. “Like what happened that eight years that we were in the White House? What did that do to me internally, my soul?”
Michelle and Barack got married in 1992, and they share two daughters, Malia and Sasha.
