Michelle Obama spoke out about husband Barack on the new podcast she co-hosts with her brother, Craig Robinson.
IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson—short for “in my opinion”—was announced on Monday by Higher Ground, the media company founded by the former president and first lady in 2018.
The first two episodes, which included an introduction as well as an interview with Emmy-nominated actress Issa Rae, were released on Wednesday. Throughout both shows, Michelle Obama shared anecdotes about her husband.
While chatting about their upbringing, the Becoming author and Robinson said they were taught that “on time is late,” though that wasn’t the case for Barack Obama.
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“He had to adjust to what ‘on time’ was,” Michelle Obama said. “I got this husband who’s like, when it’s time to leave, it’s three o’clock, he’s getting up and going to the bathroom! And I was like, ‘Dude, dude, like three o’clock departure means you’ve done all that,’ you know? It’s like, don’t start looking for your glasses, you know, at the three o’clock departure, but he’s improved over 30 years of marriage.”
Newsweek reached out to Barack Obama’s representative via email for comment.
The mom of two—who shares daughters Malia and Sasha with the Hawaii native—added that they know how their mom operates. “If they’re doing anything with me, they are early, so they’ve learned how to snap to it,” Michelle Obama said.
The White House has an annual tradition of pardoning a turkey for Thanksgiving and the ceremony is usually filled with jokes. While the Obama children initially enjoyed the event, they had enough by the time their dad left office.
“That was the one thing that the girls would do with Barack was go stand next to him when he pardoned this turkey,” Michelle Obama said.
Malia and Sasha Obama grew up in the White House from 2009 to 2017.
“It was cute when they were little, but as they got older, you could see on their faces in the shots them thinking, ‘Just poke my eyes out. Just right now. Just get me out of here. I’m standing with my father telling these stupid jokes next to a turkey,’ so by the time we got to the last year, the last turkey pardoning, they were done. They were just like, ‘I’m out. I’m not going.'”
Michelle Obama credited Robinson for getting her “through eight years in the White House,” and said he was the one who changed her mind about Barack Obama initially running for president.
The Chicago native admitted to thinking the idea was “crazy,” so the U.S. senator had a chat with Robinson. “He was smart enough to know that he needed to come to you and sell you on the idea,” Michelle Obama said to her brother.
“Barack came to me and he’s like, ‘I can’t convince your sister to go along with this,'” Robinson recalled. “And I’m like, ‘Whoa, whoa, go along with what?’ And he’s like, ‘I think I’m gonna run for president,’ I was like, ‘What?!’ I wouldn’t go along with it.”
The executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches continued: “I said to him, ‘Listen, what you have to do is, first of all, let me talk to her. You don’t talk to her, let me talk to her,'” he laughed before saying, “No it wasn’t that.”
“I said, ‘If we can get mom on this, our mom, Marian Robinson, if we can get her on board for this—which she was not on board for it—we might have a chance of getting Meech on,'” Robinson said, referring to his sister’s nickname.
“And then I said, ‘Let me talk to Meech,’ and that’s when I came and talked to you and just gave you your advice which you had given me back, pretty much, about following your passion and doing the things you love.”
He added: “The thing that pushed it over the top,” though, “was I convinced you to not penalize him for being really good at what he does.”
In the podcast episode featuring Rae, the siblings chatted about friendships. When Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, Michelle Obama said one of the first pieces of advice Robinson gave her was “no new friends.”
“You were kind of joking, but it was important for me in the normalcy of my life—or to keep my life normal even in those unusual circumstances—to continue to expand my friendships.”
Michelle Obama said that during Barack Obama’s presidency, “it was hard to reach me,” noting that “in order for me to maintain my friendships, I had to be more deliberate.”
The attorney said that when it comes to her friends, she values deep, intimate conversations, but her husband will be like, “‘Y’all still talking?'” she playfully teased.
“He’ll sit down for five minutes and be like, ‘How are the boys?’ and then he gets up and leaves.”
Michelle Obama said her husband enjoys playing golf with his friends, which often “takes five hours,” but when she asks how someone is when he gets home, his response is, ‘He’s good.'”
When she asks what they talked about, he says, according to her, “Nothing.”
The “difference,” Michelle Obama said, is “you deal with each other all day looking directly away from each other at a ball, right? Whereas when I’m with my friends, we are turned—we are physically turned in towards one another. Sometimes we’re touching, you know, there are tears, and that can go on for hours.”
The couple met in 1989 at the Chicago law firm where they both worked and wed in 1992. They welcomed Malia and Sasha Obama in 1998 and 2001, respectively.
New episodes of IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson will be released weekly and will be available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and other podcast platforms.