On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term as president. While former President Barack Obama was in attendance, his wife, Michelle Obama, made the decision to skip the event. At the time, people wondered whether her no-show was a sign of problems in their marriage. Now, Michelle is opening up about the real reason during the April 23 episode of her podcast, IMO With Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson. As it turns out, it was, as she put it, “the choice that was right for me.”

“People couldn’t believe that I was saying no for any other reason; they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart,” said Michelle. She had also recently skipped Jimmy Carter’s funeral and a number of other events that her husband chose to attend. “It took everything in my power to not do the thing that was perceived as right, but do the thing that was right for me. That was a hard thing for me to do,” she went on.

Michelle made sure that she couldn’t back out of her decision by ensuring she didn’t have a back-up outfit ready to go. “It started with not having anything to wear,” she said. “I was like, if I’m not going to do this thing, I got to tell my team, I don’t even want to have a dress ready, right? Because it’s so easy to just say let me do the right thing.”

Her step back from certain events is, she says, her way of practicing the “art of saying no.” She said, “It’s a muscle that you have to build.”

Michelle previously opened up about her decisions during her appearance on the April 9 episode of the Work in Progress with Sophia Bush podcast, the former first lady mused, “This couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself, right?”

She also shared her thoughts on the divorce rumors that had begun to swirl at the time. “The interesting thing is that, when I say ‘no,’ for the most part people are like, ‘I get it, and I’m okay,'” she said.

Michelle and Barack have dealt with their fair share of rumors over the years, but throughout it all, they have found ways to “stay hopeful” by avoiding social media.

Just yesterday, the couple were spotted grabbing dinner amidst the rumors. In photos obtained by TMZ, the two could be seen enjoying a meal at the restaurant Osteria Mozza. 

Their outing comes after Barack revealed he had been “in a deep deficit with my wife,” per the Daily Beast. He added, “I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things.”