Michelle Obama is grateful for her husband Barack Obama’s tireless role as a dad to their two daughters.
“I love looking back at photos like this of when our girls were younger,” Michelle, 61, wrote via Instagram on Sunday, June 15, sharing a throwback photo of the couple with daughters Malia, now 26, and Sasha, now 24, in the White House in honor of Father’s Day. “@BarackObama has always been there for us, no matter what — even when it felt like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. We’ve always been so grateful.”
She added, “To Barack and all the dads and father-figures celebrating today, Happy Father’s Day! ❤️.”
Michelle and Barack, 63, have been married since 1992 after meeting a decade earlier during their early legal careers in Chicago. They welcomed Malia and Sasha in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Seven years after Sasha was born, Barack was elected President of the United States. He served two consecutive terms before leaving the Oval Office in 2016.
Since then, Michelle has taken a step back from the public eye. After she opted to skip Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration earlier this year, fans and political commentators speculated that her marriage was on the rocks.
“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,” Michelle said on Sophia Bush’s “Work in Progress” podcast in April, denying the speculation. “This couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself. But, that’s what society does to us. We start actually finally going, ‘What am I doing? Who am I doing this for?’”
Michelle further posited that if actions don’t “fit into the stereotype of what people think we should do,” they get “labeled as something negative and horrible.”
Weeks later, Michelle doubled down on her reasoning for her inaugural absence.
“My decision to skip the inauguration, you know, what people don’t realize, or my decision to make choices at the beginning of this year that suited me, were met with such ridicule and criticism,” she said on her and brother Craig Robinson’s “IMO” podcast. “Like, people couldn’t believe that I was saying no for any other reason, that they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart, you know?”
She continued, “It’s like, while I’m here really trying to own my life and intentionally practice making the choice that was right for me. It took everything in my power [not to do] the thing that was perceived as right, but do the things that [were] right for me. I had to basically trick myself out of it. It started with not having anything to wear. I mean, I had affirmatively, ’cause I’m always prepared for any funeral, anything. I walk around with the right dress, I travel with clothes just in case something pops off.”
