Former first lady Michelle Obama is setting the record straight about her marriage to Barack Obama.
In part two of her conversation with Sophia Bush on the “Work in Progress” podcast, Michelle Obama addressed divorce rumors that have circulated about her and the former president after he had attended several events solo earlier this year.
While talking about making her own decisions this year, she mentioned how making choices for herself hasn’t always been received positively by others.
“The interesting thing is that when I say ‘no,’ for the most part, people are like, ‘I get it’ and I’m OK,” Michelle Obama began. “That’s the thing that we, as women, I think we struggle with disappointing people, you know?”
She continued, “So much so that this year people were — they couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself, that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.”
“This couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself, right? But that’s what society does to us. We start actually finally going, ‘What am I doing? Who am I doing this for?’” she added. “And if it doesn’t fit into the sort of stereotype of what people think we should do, then it gets labeled as something negative and horrible.”
Elsewhere in the podcast, the former first lady and bestselling author said, “I feel like it’s time for me to make some big girl decisions about my life and own it fully.”
“Because if not now, when? What am I waiting for?” she said. “Because look, the summers are — we’re in summer countdown at 61 right? It’s not so tragic if something happens to you and you’re 80. So now is the time for me to start asking myself these hard questions of who do I truly want to be every day?”
In January, Barack Obama attended former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral without his wife. He also attended the inauguration of President Donald Trump solo that same month.
On Valentine’s day in February, Barack Obama shared a sweet photo with Michelle Obama and captioned the post, “Thirty-two years together and you still take my breath away.”
MIchelle Obama shared the same photo in her own post and wrote, “If there’s one person I can always count on, it’s you, @BarackObama. You’re my rock. Always have been. Always will be.”
The couple have opened up about their romance multiple times in the past.
Barack Obama told Oprah.com that he met Michelle Obama in 1988 in Chicago, when she was a 25-year-old lawyer at a corporate law firm and he was a summer associate finishing law school.
In 2008, Michelle Obama told ABC News that her firm was behind their meeting.
“Because I went to Harvard and he went to Harvard, and the firm thought, ‘Oh, we’ll hook these two people up,’” she said. “So, you know, there was a little intrigue, but I must say after about a month, Barack, about a month in, asked me out, and I thought no way. This is completely tacky.”
They tied the knot on Oct. 3, 1992, and share two daughters together: Malia Obama, 26, and Sasha Obama, 23.
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