After weeks of speculation that the most famous marriage in politics was in trouble, Barack Obama posted a fawning tribute to the “love of his life,” Michelle Obama, in honor of her 61st birthday on Friday.
“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!,” he wrote on Instagram, beneath a photo of the casually-dressed couple holding hands over dinner.
“Love you, honey!” his wife quickly replied.
The former president, one of the most savvy political operators ever to take the Oval Office, posted the message amid rampant rumors that all was not well in his marriage.
It began when former first lady Michelle failed to join her husband at Jimmy Carter’s funeral on January 9 — and heated up even more when it was announced she will not be attending Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
“You cannot tell Michelle what to do — no one can.” said a source who has worked with the Obamas, of her decision to skip the swearing-in.”That’s why she could not be persuaded to stump for Joe Biden during the last election.”
Sure, pundits reasoned, she may despise Trump … but Democrat Jimmy Carter?
CNN reported that Michelle missed Carter’s funeral — which all four other living first ladies attended with t their husbands — because she was in Hawaii on an extended vacation.
But that didn’t quiet social media, with one commenter posting: “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.”
The two former presidents, despite having been exceptionally critical of each other during last year’s presidential election, were seen laughing and smiling as they whispered in the seated crowd at Washington National Cathedral last week.
But those who know the Obamas — who share two grown daughters, Malia, 26, and Sasha, 23 — say the couple have always made it clear their marriage is not a fairytale.
“They don’t pretend that they have this Camelot relationship,” said the source who has worked with them. “They’re not trying to present that they’re this magical couple.”
Even so, Michelle has been “checked out” of DC life ever since the couple left the White House back in January 2017, according to a Beltway insider.
That’s led to “certainly nonstop chatter that Michelle is fed up with the political circus, and pretending everything is OK with Barack all the time,” said the high-society insider. “What this will all lead to is to be revealed in time.”
While it’s been reported that the Obamas’ primary residence is in the Kalorama neighborhood of DC — where, in June 2017, they bought a home for $8.1 million — Michelle is said to spend a lot of time on Martha’s Vineyard, where they own a $11.75 million ocean-front compound.
Another source confirmed that Michelle is “mostly Martha’s Vineyard, never in DC,” and multiple others said had been on the island last summer without Barack and appeared “happy and content.”
The Obamas were last publicly spotted together in Los Angeles — where both their daughters live — in December, at the trendy Hollywood Italian eatery Mother Wolf. Their daughters live in LA. It wasn’t a lovey-dovey couples trip, though, as Michelle was also spotted having a girls’ night out with Rita Wilson, wife of Tom Hanks.
Before that, the Obamas were onstage together in August at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Over the years, Michelle has been open about the strains her husband’s career and political aspirations put on their marriage and family.
In Barack’s 2020 book, “A Promised Land,” he wrote that his wife had been frustrated about him working long hours as an Illinois senator, telling him: “This isn’t what I signed up for, Barack. I feel like I’m doing it all by myself.”
And Michelle admitted in a 2022 panel discussion 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.
Barack later told CBS of her comments, “Let me just say this: It sure helps to be out of the White House and to have a little more time with her.”
Michelle has admitted that they are very different.
“Barack wants to talk rationally and I’m like ‘rational?’” she once told Oprah Winfrey in a podcast chat, conceding she is more “hot-headed” than her husband.
“Don’t come to me with sense — I’m angry!” she said of her about him. “Don’t come to me with your three bullet points — you better get out of here and let me cool down!”
The couple have also had to contend with rumors that Barack has been unfaithful. Last October, actress Jennifer Aniston publicly dismissed as “absolutely untrue” claims that she was in a relationship with the former president.
“‘I’ve met him once. I know Michelle more than him,” she said.
In a 2017 biography of Obama by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David Garrow, Sheila Miyoshi Jager — an ex-girlfriend who Barack came close to marrying before he met Michelle — revealed they’d kept up an intimate, if occasional, relationship between 1991 and 1992, when he had been with Michelle for a couple of years.
“I always felt bad about it,” Jager told Garrow.
Michelle, meanwhile, has absolutely denied that she will ever run for president, despite widespread popularity.
All of which is why, a source who knows Michelle said, no one should be surprised she isn’t attending Trump’s inauguration with her husband.
“She’s always been very deliberate about where and how she shows up. She showed up reluctantly for the election. They were united, but she doesn’t have to unify around [Trump],” the Michelle source said. “Her absence speaks volumes.”
“Barack will be respectful of her views, just as she is of his,” echoed the source who was worked with the Obamas.
As for whether or not the carefully timed Instagram post hushes buzz, the high-society source said, “It’s certainly been an interesting dinner conversation.”
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