NEED TO KNOW
Barack Obama joined wife Michelle Obama for the latest episode of her IMO podcast, where the two joked about the rumors surrounding their marriage
Michelle’s co-host and brother Craig Robinson quipped, “Wait, you guys like each other?”
Barack, meanwhile, joked that their relationship had been “touch and go for a while”
President Barack Obama made a long-awaited appearance on Michelle Obama’s podcast this week, where the two wasted no time poking fun at the speculation about their relationship.
Michelle and her co-host and brother, Craig Robinson, opened the show by teasing the “very, very, very special” guest set to join them that day.
“This is the episode that everyone’s been waiting for with bated breath,” Craig announced, “because we have my brother-in-law, your husband, the former president of the United States.”
Michelle added, “He made time in his busy schedule to come on. We are honored.”
As soon as Barack, 63, and Michelle, 61, shared a welcoming embrace, the teasing began.
“Wait, you guys like each other?” Craig joked, as Michelle replied, “That’s the rumor mill.” While he took his seat, Barack quipped, “She took me back! It was touch and go for a while.”
Michelle teased, “Now, don’t you start,” before Craig told the couple, “It’s so nice to have you both in the same room.”
With a laugh, Michelle told him, “I know, because when we aren’t, folks think we’re divorced.”
Barack and Michelle are no strangers to gossip about their personal lives, with split rumors emerging as they made solo outings and worked on individual projects this year. Even a family photo to celebrate their daughter Sasha’s 24th birthday in June wasn’t enough to convince some that the couple was very much together.
Barack Obama / Instagram
Malia, Michelle, Sasha and Barack Obama
In a May interview on The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett podcast, Michelle confronted some of the speculation head-on.
“The beauty of my husband and our partnership is that neither one of us was really ever gonna quit at it, ’cause that’s not who we are,” she said. “And I know that about him. He knows that about me.”
As for her decisions not to attend certain public events after leaving the White House — specifically, her decision to skip President Donald Trump’s January inauguration — Michelle said that she’s finally starting to feel she has “permission to do what I want to do.”
“I think at 61, I’m finally owning my wisdom,” she said. “I think it takes women until we’re about 60 to be like, ‘I think I know a thing or two.’ “
On her IMO podcast in April, Michelle shared more about her decision to skip the inauguration.
“People couldn’t believe that I was saying no for any other reason, they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart,” she said. “It took everything in my power to not do the thing that was perceived as right, but do the things that was right for me, that was a hard thing for me to do.”
On today’s IMO episode, Michelle and Barack discussed the challenges facing men and boys, and why they both think it could have been difficult to have a son after raising Sasha and her older sister, Malia, 27.
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The former president admitted, “I think I might’ve been more judgmental, harder, and I would’ve tried to — I’d like to think I would have been more self-aware enough to combat that, but I just think father-son relationships, for me, particularly if I don’t have a dad around to show it to me, might’ve been more difficult.”
Barack was raised by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, after she and his father, Barack H. Obama, Sr., divorced when he was 2 years old.
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