Michelle Obama has been really working the podcast circuit over the past few weeks — and in her latest intriguing appearance she revealed a few more secrets about her marriage to former POTUS Barack.
Speaking to Amy Poehler on the Tuesday, May 13 episode of “Good Hang”, the former first lady, 61, said she and her husband of three decades have a “deal” when it comes to making fun of each other.
“We have a deal, Barack and I, in our marriage,” she revealed. “It started very early and it’s like ‘I can tease you but you cannot tease me.’ So when he does, I’m like ‘Oh oh oh, wait a minute, what’s going on here?’ … but when me, [daughters] Malia and Sasha are all of us together, he doesn’t stand a chance. We mercilessly go after him. Teasing is our love language and I tell him that. I say ‘When I tease you, it’s like a love tap’.”
The mother of two (Sasha, 26 and Malia, 23) also talked about how her bedtime routine is her favorite part of the day — even though she likes to tuck in much earlier than her husband. “We usually have dinner at around 6:30 and he’s a night owl,” she said. “If we have guests, I’m good; if I’m with people, I’m up, I’m awake, I can do this stuff. But after we’ve had our catchup conversation and our together time and all of that, I’m looking at the clock and he’s looking at me like, ‘Really, it’s 8 o’clock.’ I’m like, ‘It’s not you, it’s me, it’s time for bed!’”
Michelle Obama Says She and Barack Obama Aren’t Always ‘Couple Goals’
She went on to reveal that she and her husband, who she married in 1992, disagree over something many couples struggle with: the ideal room temperature for sleeping. “The room has to be cold,” she said. “It’s a battle with my partner, because he’s always cold and I’m like ‘Do not touch [the thermostat].’ And sometimes I wake up hot and I’ll wake him up, ‘Did you touch the thermostat? You touched the thermostat didn’t you?’ and he’s like ‘I didn’t, I swear to God!’ He now knows, and he’s afraid of the thermostat.”
The bestselling author also talked about how it’s taken until now to fully find her confidence. “I know there are young women in their thirties and forties trying to get that perfection thing right,” she said. “We always feel like we’re not doing enough, we’re always harboring guilt and it’s not until now that we can look back on this lifetime of accomplishments and say ‘Look, maybe I did know a thing or two.’ I think we’re harder on ourselves than anyone can be. And I’m having those conversations with myself every day. It’s like ‘slow down, it’s okay, you don’t have to get this right, you can make some mistakes maybe, and you’ve got some wisdom to share.’ Finally, you know, I feel confident in the wisdom that I have to share.”
In a moving admission, she also explained that her late mom Marian Robinson, who died in May 2024 at the age of 86, instilled strong self-esteem in her and her brother Craig Robinson (cohost of her new “IMO” podcast) from a young age.
“Where confidence began for me is sitting at my kitchen table, me and my brother, with a mom who really really loved our voices,” she recalled. “She liked to hear our thoughts, she thought we were funny, we made her laugh, we felt special in her presence. Sadly we needed that because as kids — black kids, poor black kids — there would be a lot of people who would try to dim the light that she was pouring into us, so we had an abundance of it which allowed us to steel ourselves for what was to come. It probably prepared me in ways I couldn’t have imagined for those White House years and that time in the spotlight because I was still fortified with the light she had given me all my life.”
