Michelle Obama isn’t having it. The former First Lady blasted speculation that her marriage to Barack Obama is on the rocks, calling the talk “ridiculous” and rooted in outdated expectations of how public figures should live.
Speaking on the NPR podcast “Wild Card with Rachel Martin” on June 26, Michelle made it clear she’s tired of people reading too much into her personal choices—especially when it comes to her marriage.
“You know, the fact that people don’t see me going out on a date with my husband sparks rumors of the end of our marriage,” she said. When host Rachel Martin joked, “It’s like the apocalypse!” Michelle didn’t hold back: “It’s like the apocalypse. It’s like, OK, so we don’t Instagram every minute of our lives. We are 60. We’re 60 y’all… You just are not gonna know what we’re doing every minute of the day, you know?”
That silence has fueled online gossip—especially after Barack showed up solo to President Trump’s second inauguration in January. But Michelle’s absence wasn’t about their marriage. It was about boundaries—and owning her time.
“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 during an earlier episode of her IMO podcast, which she co-hosts with her brother Craig Robinson.
She didn’t flinch from the backlash.
“I’m here really trying to own my life and intentionally practice making the choice that was right for me,” she said. “It took everything in my power to not do the thing that ‘was right,’ or was perceived as right, but do the thing that was right for me.”
On Wild Card, Michelle said the choice to skip the inauguration was part of a bigger shift in how she’s choosing to live this chapter of her life—on her terms.
“One of the major decisions I made this year [was] to stay put and not attend inaugurations and all the things that I’m supposed to,” she said. “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.’”
She knows the criticism won’t stop. But she’s not apologizing.
“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 said. “But we’ll see there. Maybe next year we sit down, I’ll go, ‘You know, Rachel, I went a little too far.’”
For now, the message is clear: the Obamas are fine. And Michelle Obama is done explaining herself. Watch the conversation in the video below:
