Earlier this year, rumors began circulating of trouble within the marriage of former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. There was never really much reason to believe the rumors were solid, aside from the former First Lady not showing up alongside her husband at such events as Jimmy Carter’s funeral and the second inauguration of President Donald Trump.
However, the couple has been slow to deny or otherwise refute the rumors, leading them to persist.
That finally came to an end this week, when the former president appeared on the podcast that his wife hosts with her brother, retired basketball coach Craig Robinson.
“Don’t make me cry now.” Barack and Michelle Obama address divorce rumors for the first time. pic.twitter.com/FpaooIqGyp
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) July 16, 2025
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In a clip from the podcast, released Wednesday, the 44th president is seen arriving for the podcast and hugging his wife, at which point Craig Robinson says “You too like each other?”
Per a CNN transcript, Obama joked, “She took me back!… it was touch and go for a while.” He went on to say that “this is the kind of thing that I just miss,” noting that the months of rumors took place without him even hearing about it, until he started being asked about it.
Michelle went on to say that when the two of them are not in the same room, “most people think we’re divorced.”
When the time for joking was over, the former first lady made it clear that the former first couple remains together, and there was never any serious possibility of that changing.
Barack & Michelle Obama are addressing the divorce rumors head-on.
“She took me back!” Barack Obama said jokingly. “It was touch and go for a while.”
“There hasn’t been one moment in our marriage where I’ve thought about quitting on my man,’ she said.https://t.co/Zoe3cSrPUe
— Arlette Saenz (@ArletteSaenz) July 16, 2025
“There hasn’t been one moment in our marriage where I’ve thought about quitting on my man,” Michelle Obama said on the show. “And we’ve had some really hard times and we’ve 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.”
She had hinted, on another episode, that the divorce rumors weren’t true.
“My decision to skip the inauguration, what people don’t realize — or my decision to make choices at the beginning of this year that suited me were met with such ridicule and criticism,” she said on an episode earlier this year, per CNN. “People couldn’t believe that I was saying no for any other reason that they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart.”
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
