Former first lady Michelle Obama praised former President Barack Obama as her ‘everything’ and the ‘coolest guy I know’ on his 64th birthday after the longtime couple joked about divorce rumors that have been swirling for months.
‘Happy birthday to my love, my best friend, my everything! @BarackObama, even after all these years, you’re still the coolest guy I know,’ the former first lady posted to Instagram Monday afternoon, accompanied by a photo of the pair.
The former president turned 64 Monday, with the former first lady sharing the birthday post on both Instagram and Facebook. Michelle Obama’s birthday message followed months of speculation that the couple’s more than 30-year marriage was on the rocks before the couple joked about the rumors during a July podcast.
‘It’s my husband, ya’ll!’ Michelle Obama said jokingly at the start of a podcast of ‘IMO’ in July when the former president first joined the set. ‘When we aren’t (in the same room), folks think we’re divorced.’
The former first lady hosts ‘IMO’ with her brother Craig Robinson.
‘She took me back!’ Barack Obama quipped during his appearance, joking, ‘It was touch and go for a while.’
Speculation had mounted for months that the presidential couple was headed to divorce, which heightened in January when the former first lady did not attend high-profile events such as President Donald Trump’s inauguration or President Jimmy Carter’s funeral.
‘There hasn’t been one moment in our marriage where I’ve thought about quitting my man,’ Michelle Obama said during an ‘IMO’ podcast in July. ‘We’ve had some really hard times. We’ve had a lot of fun times, a lot of adventures, and I have become a better person because of the man I’m married to.’
‘Don’t make me cry now,’ Barack said. ‘Don’t let me start tearing up now.’
Michelle previously had dismissed divorce rumors, including in April when she addressed questions as to why she did not join the 44th president at Trump’s inauguration or Carter’s funeral.
‘But the interesting thing is that when I say no, for the most part, people are like, ‘I get it, and I’m OK,’ right?’ she told podcast host Sophia Bush in April about how she spends her time. ‘And that’s the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with, like disappointing people. I mean so much so that 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, you know? This couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions herself, right? But that’s what society does to us.’
‘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,’ Obama continued.
Fox News Digital reached out to Michelle Obama’s office for any additional comment Tuesday morning but did not immediately receive a reply.
Fox News Digital’s David Rutz and Hannah Panreck contributed to this report.