In a new episode of their IMO podcast, Michelle Obama’s brother, Craig Robinson, revealed he didn’t expect her relationship with Barack Obama to last more than a month.
The episode, which focused on dating and featured guest Tracee Ellis Ross, comes amid renewed divorce speculation. Rumors intensified after Michelle opted not to attend the funeral of President Jimmy Carter or President Donald Trump’s inauguration alongside her husband.
“I love talking about dating, because I haven’t done it in decades,” the former first lady said at the top of the podcast, per DailyMail.com.
Robinson said he learned early on from his father “you can really tell a person’s character by how they play pick-up basketball,” adding how Michelle made Craig put Barack to the test early on.
“And I’ve told this story many times about when you first started dating Barack. So Mich starts to date Barack, and we don’t know who this guy is, we’re just like, ‘Barack? Who’s got a name like Barack?’ And I’m thinking it’s gonna last a month like most of your relationships,” Robinson said.
Michelle objected, however, saying, “That’s not true. I’ve had many a long-term boyfriend.”
Robinson then laughed: “I wouldn’t call those guys boyfriends.”
He recalled his first meeting with Barack, mentioning how his mother, the late Marian Robinson, was thrilled that he was tall. “And I said to myself, ‘Too bad it’s not going to last,’” Robinson said.
“But the best part of it was, after we met him and she had been dating him for a little while she said, ‘Would you mind Craig, taking him to play?’ And at first I said, ‘No way, I’m not going to do your dirty work for you. If he turns out to be a bad dude, I’m not going to be the one to say,’” Robinson said.
“Obviously, we had a great time playing,” he added, reporting that Barack had done fine.
Still, the two have been the subject of divorce rumors for months. And Barack Obama delivered a remarkably candid admission regarding the state of his marriage to Michelle Obama in a recent interview.
“I was in a deep deficit with my wife,” Barack told Hamilton College President Steven Tepper in a conversation. “So I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things.”
The former president has previously stated that his relationship with the former first lady suffered during his consecutive terms in office from 2009 to 2017.
“Let me just say this: It sure helps to be out of the White House and to have a little more time with her,” Barack said in a May 2023 interview, making sure to praise Michelle for being “forgiving” of his shortcomings.
Michelle Obama, meanwhile, responded to a surge of speculation about her marriage, stating unequivocally that recent personal decisions have nothing to do with her separation from the former president.
During an appearance on Sophia Bush’s Work in Progress podcast, the former first lady explained why she was withdrawing from certain public appearances, presenting them as purposeful choices for her well-being rather than signals of marital dysfunction.
“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, you know, 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.
“That this couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself, right?” she continued. Obama added, “That’s what society does to us.”
She clarified that women frequently feel pressure to defend their choices, especially when they don’t align with expectations.
“We start actually, finally going, ‘What am I doing? Who am I doing this for?’ And if it doesn’t fit into the sort of stereotype of what people think we should do, then it gets labeled as something negative and horrible,” Michelle Obama said.
“So you know, now is the time for me to start asking myself these hard questions of who do I truly want to be every day,” she said. That, she emphasized, “looks like whatever I want it to look like,” she added.