Widespread speculation had the world convinced the Obama’s marriage was on thin ice and that the couple were potentially headed for a divorce.
But the former president dispelled all the rumours in a gushing birthday tribute to his wife Michelle, who he affectionately called the “love of his life”. Breaking his silence on Instagram, Barack Obama posted a sweet snap of pair sitting hand in hand and smiling at a dinner table.
In honour of his wife’s 61st birthday on Friday, Obama wrote: “You fill every room with warmth, wisdom, humor, and grace — and you look good doing it. I’m so lucky to be able to take on life’s adventures with you. Love you!” Michelle quickly replied underneath the post: “Love you, honey!”
The couple’s marriage was first called into question when the former first lady failed to join her husband at Jimmy Carter’s funeral on January 9. Rumours only grew when it was announced she would also not be attending Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
But a close source to the Obamas said of Michelle’s absence: “You cannot tell Michelle what to do — no one can. That’s why she could not be persuaded to stump for Joe Biden during the last election.”
According to CNN, Michelle was on holiday in Hawaii so couldn’t make Jimmy Carter’s funeral — which was attending by all four other living first ladies and their husbands. But it still fuelled speculation on social media on the status of the couple’s marriage, with one user commenting: “An Obama divorce would not be on my 2025 predictions but it might happen.”
A high-society insider added that the topic “is getting a lot of DC peeps talking. The noise is getting louder. I’m told she was furious at seeing her husband yukking it up with Trump at the Carter funeral.”
And the Obamas, who share two daughters, Malia, 26, and Sasha, 23, have always been honest about their marriage being far from a fairytale. “They don’t pretend that they have this Camelot relationship,” the source added. “They’re not trying to present that they’re this magical couple.”
It comes as amid further rumours that Michelle has been “checked out” of DC life ever since the pair left the White House back in January 2017, a Beltway insider has claimed. It has sparked “nonstop chatter that Michelle is fed up with the political circus, and pretending everything is OK with Barack all the time,” the insider added. “What this will all lead to is to be revealed in time.”
Michelle’s frustrations about Obama’s working hours were also laid bare in his 2020 book, A Promised Land. Speaking about his job as an Illinois senator, Obama wrote that Michelle had told him: “This isn’t what I signed up for, Barack. I feel like I’m doing it all by myself.” In a 2022 panel discussion, she admitted that she hated her husband for a decade. “People think I’m being catty — it’s like, there were ten years where I couldn’t stand my husband,” she said.
Responding to the comments, Barack later told CBS: “Let me just say this: It sure helps to be out of the White House and to have a little more time with her.”
The couple haven’t been able to escape cheating rumours either, with Actress Jennifer Aniston forced to publically dismiss “absolutely untrue” claims that she was in a relationship with the former president. She said: ‘I’ve met him once. I know Michelle more than him.”
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