Barack and Michelle Obama Finally Address Divorce Rumors in Joint Interview

The Gist

• Barack Obama made an appearance on his wife Michelle's podcast, IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson on July 16.

• During his appearance, Craig make a joke about the couple not liking each other.

• Barack and Michelle proceeded to laugh off the "rumor mill," with Barack joking that Michelle "took [him] back."

Barack and Michelle Obama know all about the rumors surrounding them and their marriage—and their only response is to laugh them off. The former president made his long-awaited appearance on his wife's podcast, IMO, which she shares with her brother Craig Robinson. During the episode, the couple took a light-hearted approach to the rumors that they were headed for divorce.

"This is the episode that everyone's been waiting for with bated breath," Craig said as he introduced Barack, "because we have my brother-in-law, your husband, the former president of the United States."

Michelle chimed in, "He made time in his busy schedule to come on. We are honored."

Craig couldn't resist throwing in a joke about the "rumor mill."

"Wait, you guys like each other?" Craig said sarcastically.

"That's the rumor mill," Michelle replied.

Barack joined in on the joke, teasing, "She took me back! It was touch and go for a while."

Michelle replied, "Now, don't you start."

Her brother kept the joke going: "It's so nice to have you both in the same room."

Michelle quipped back, "I know, because when we aren't, folks think we're divorced."

People certainly do love to speculate about the former president and former first lady's relationship. And although Michelle and Barack seem to be able to laugh it off now, it hasn't always been easy. “People always ask me and Barack, how did we stay hopeful in, not just the eight years that we were in the White House, but beyond?” Michelle said on a previous episode of IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson recorded live at SXSW. “Because, let me tell you, there was a lot of negative energy flipping our way—a lot of rumors, a lot of gossip." She explained that they managed to get through the rumors by steering clear of online discourse altogether. "Through it all, what kept us sane—and we tried to instill this in our daughters—is, you cannot live through social media,” she said. "I don't think I have ever once looked at a comment section, period.”

Even though the "rumor mill" has clearly got things wrong about the state of Michelle and Barack's marriage, the couple have been open about their struggles as a couple. After all, no marriage is perfect.

In April, Barack admitted that he was in what he called a "deep deficit" with Michelle, per the Daily Beast. “So I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things,” he added.

In May, Michelle spoke about how couples therapy can be beneficial in long-term relationships. “There are so many natural reasons why marriage, infertility [and] trying to have kids makes things difficult,” she said during an appearance on Steven Bartlett's The Diary of a CEO podcast. "I try to tell couples, ‘Of course it’s hard. Just listen to what I said, like, if you’re having some issues in your marriage, it’s not you. It’s the process of marriage. It’s just all hard.’”

She added, "If you’re not getting help, talking about it [and] going to therapy, just understanding how things are changing, how do you continuously renegotiate your relationship with your partner?”

Michelle also opened up about why she had missed a number of political events, leaving her husband to attend on his own, adding fuel to the rumor mill fire. As she explained, she was simply making a decision not to attend—and it was something people struggled to understand. “That's the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with disappointing people. I mean, 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," she said.

She made similar comments a few months later during an appearance on NPR’s Wild Card podcast. “The fact that people don’t see me going out on a date with my husband sparks rumors of the end of our marriage,” Michelle said to host Rachel Martin. “It’s like, ‘Okay, 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,” she added.

Read the original article on InStyle