Barack Obama celebrated Mother’s Day with a sweet tribute to his wife, Michelle.
“Happy Mother’s Day to all the amazing moms and mother-figures!” the former president wrote on social media alongside a photo of Michelle and the couple’s two daughters, Sasha and Malia. “@MichelleObama, the girls and I are so lucky to have you in our lives. We love you.”
Earlier this month, the former first lady addressed long-standing rumors that she and her husband had secretly divorced, telling The Diary of a CEO podcast in a May 1 episode: “If I were having problems with my husband, everybody would know about it.”
“I’m not a martyr, I’m not,” Michelle continued. “I would be problem-solving in public, and be like, ‘Let me tell you what [Barack] did.’”
The former attorney also opened up on how she and her husband have made the past 32 years of their marriage work, explaining that neither one of them has ever seriously considered walking away.
“That’s not who we are. And I know that about him. He knows that about me,” Michelle said.
Talk of marital strife between the couple began after Barack attended both Jimmy Carter’s funeral and President Donald Trump‘s second inauguration alone.
In an April episode of her podcast, IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson, the author and activist explained her absence from Trump’s inauguration and said that she was making a decision that was right for her and was practicing the “art of saying no.”
“People couldn’t believe that I was saying no for any other reason, they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart,” Michelle said. “It took everything in my power to not do the thing that was perceived as right, but do the things that was right for me, that was a hard thing for me to do.”
