Former first lady Michelle Obama is setting the record straight once and for all.
During a recent appearance on The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett podcast, Michelle addressed the recent divorce rumors that have been circulating about her and the former president, after she opted out of several high-profile events earlier this year, leaving her husband to attend them solo.
“If I were having problems with my husband, everybody would know about it,” she said, laughing.
“He would know it,” she added, referencing her brother and IMO podcast co-host Craig Robinson. “And everybody would know it.”
“I’m not a martyr,” she continued. “I would be problem solving in public. ‘Let me tell you what he did.’”
Robinson, 63, joked, “If they were having a problem, I would be doing a podcast with him.”
Michelle, 61, who has been married to Barack, 63, since 1992 and shares daughters Malia, 26, and Sasha, 23, clarified earlier in the podcast that although she’s spoken publicly about marital challenges during their time in the spotlight, divorce was never on the table.
“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.”
Addressing her absence from certain events, the “Later Daters” producer said that these days, “I feel like now I have permission to do what I want to do.”
“I think at 61, I’m finally owning my wisdom,” she continued. “I think it takes women until we’re about 60 to be like, ‘I think I know a thing or two.’“
Specifically addressing her decision to skip Trump’s January inauguration, Michelle shared that, for once, she prioritized her own feelings.
“What do I want to do in this moment? As a box-checking, a person who has been box-checking her whole life, doing the right thing, trying to always be an example, always going high, I think now I earned a little bit of ‘well, how do I feel?’ “she explained.
“‘Do I want to upend my life and take this trip and leave my peace and my children for this?’ I didn’t have to, but that was my choice.”
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Michelle shared the same sentiment on an episode of ” IMO ” last month, calling her snub “hard” but “right.”
“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.”
She also hoped her decision would serve as a positive example for her daughters.
“I want our daughters, I want the young women out there… I want my girls to start practicing different strategies for saying no,” Michelle added.
“After all that I’ve done in this world, if I am still showing them that I have to keep- I still have to show people that I love my country, that I’m doing the right thing, that I am always setting, going high all the time, even in the face of a lot of hypocrisy and contradiction, all I’m doing is keeping that crazy bar that our mothers and grandmothers set for us.”
