Is it pure magic? Or just work? How Barack and Michelle Obama have kept their marriage alive for 30 years.
There were moments when she wanted to push him out the window. Back when Michelle Obama, 58, was sitting at home alone with her two daughters and her husband was making a career as a politician. Those weren’t just moments, but “phases that can last a very long time,” Michelle later admitted, adding, “Marriage is a struggle.”
Michelle + Barack Obama: 30 years of marriage was “an adventure”
Hard words that don’t want to fit in with the vows of love and romantic photos that she and husband Barack Obama, 61, posted last week on the occasion of their 30th wedding anniversary. “I know that I won the lottery that day and that I could not have had a better life partner,” he wrote. And she gushed: “The last 30 years have been an adventure and I’m grateful to have you by my side.” Are the Obamas staging a huge kitsch show? Or do they actually manage to be a couple even after 30 years of marriage and not a partnership of convenience?
The short answer: Yes, they can! But in order to decode their love secret, you have to take a closer look. “Anyone who experiences them together cannot escape their magic. They are soulmates, two strong personalities who cannot be separated,” says a close friend of the couple. He also knows how to keep their love alive.
Romance is important to them – and at the same time not everything
Every now and then they rent a hotel suite and eat burgers on the bed. Or they have a sushi chef come home. In any case, according to the confidant, Barack sings a song for his wife on every dinner date. Romance is important to them, but it is above all the crises that have welded the couple together. Her loneliness back then as a young mother, but also the difficult time before that, when she only became pregnant after artificial insemination. Today she states: “If I had left then, I would have missed all the beauty of the relationship.”
A relationship at eye level, full of respect and humor. “They don’t make a difference whether the cameras are on or off,” says a staffer who saw the former US President and First Lady in the White House during the 2009-2017 tenure and raves about the magic that surrounds the couple .
A passionate couple, hungry for life and approachable
The fact that Barack touched, kissed, and hugged his wife on official occasions despite his high office grabbed almost as many headlines as the fact that Obama was the first black president. A passionate couple, hungry for life, likeable and approachable. Two who know how lucky they are in life, but also how hard they had to fight for it. You grew up in poor conditions, your father suffers from multiple sclerosis; he is a child of divorce who last saw his father when he was ten. Relationships that shape – and connect.
Initially, however, Michelle Barack, who in 1989 did an internship at the law firm where she was already an attorney, was rebuffed. The fact that she allowed herself to be persuaded to have lunch is one of the best decisions of her life: “The moment I allowed myself to feel anything for Barack, the feelings flooded me – an overwhelming wave of pleasure, gratitude, fulfillment and Admiration.”
Boredom? Don’t know the Obamas even now
Since then they have been going their own way together, encouraging and challenging each other. And now that daughters Malia, 24, and Sasha, 21, are out of the house, they’re enjoying their love more than ever. “We have more emotional time, emotional energy. It’s just me, him, the dogs and dinner,” says Michelle. “We have a strong marriage.”