Rumors have been flying that Barack and Michelle Obama are headed for a split, but the couple says that’s not true at all. They say the gossip is only happening because they don’t post their lives all over social media.
On the NPR podcast Wild Card, Michelle said: “The fact that people don’t see me going out on a date with my husband sparks rumors of the end of our marriage. It’s like, OK, so we don’t Instagram every minute of our lives.”
She joked that it’s really just their age. Michelle said: “We are 60. You just are not going to know what we’re doing every minute of the day. Yes, I guess we’re famous, but we’re 60. We don’t take selfies.”
There’s been talk about why she skipped certain big events like Jimmy Carter’s funeral and Trump’s inauguration. Michelle had a direct answer for that too.
She said: “One of the major decisions I made this year was to stay put and not attend funerals and inaugurations and all the things that I’m supposed to attend. That was a part of me using my ambition to say, ‘Let me define what I want to do, apart from what I’m supposed to do, what the world expects of me.’ And I have to own that. Those are my choices. Whatever the backlash was, I had to sit in it and own it. But I didn’t regret it, you know? It’s my life now, and I can say that, now.”
Michelle also talked more about her relationship with Barack on another podcast she co-hosts with her brother. She said: “There hasn’t been one moment in our marriage where I thought about quitting my man. And we’ve had some really hard times, but 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.”
Barack joined her on that podcast and gave a short but emotional reply. He said: “Okay. Don’t make me cry now.”
