A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: Michelle Obama has lived a lot of her adult life under immense scrutiny, which meant carefully thinking through every word she uttered in public.
But she is in a place in her life now where she gets to integrate her public and private self a little more. And that means saying “no” to some of the things that are expected of her, like attending President Trump’s inauguration, or former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral. She knows that those decisions were scrutinized in the press. “Whatever the backlash was,” she says, “I had to sit in it and own it. But I didn’t regret it.”
Her current avenue for sharing more of herself is the new podcast she co-hosts with her brother called IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson. On Wild Card, she talked about not feeling like she’s been able to realize her own ambition, the words her mom shared with her at the end of her life, and the divorce gossip surrounding her and former President Barack Obama.
This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Watch or listen to the full podcast above, or read an excerpt below.
On the scrutiny she got for not attending Carter’s funeral or Trump’s inauguration.
Michelle Obama: One of the major decisions I made this year was to stay put and not attend funerals and inaugurations and all the things that I’m supposed to attend. That was a part of me using my ambition to say, “Let me define what I want to do, apart from what I’m supposed to do, what the world expects of me.” And I have to own that. Those are my choices. Whatever the backlash was, I had to sit in it and own it. But I didn’t regret it, you know? It’s my life now, and I can say that, now. But we’ll see. Maybe next year, we sit down, I’ll go, “You know, Rachel, I went a little too far.”
On the divorce rumors that spread in the wake of her not being at the inauguration.
Obama: The fact that people don’t see me going out on a date with my husband sparks rumors of the end of our marriage. It’s like, “OK, so we don’t Instagram every minute of our lives. We are 60. We’re 60, y’all. You just are not gonna know what we’re doing every minute of the day.
On feeling like she has never been able to realize her own ambition because she has always put family first, and how now she has the chance to for the first time in her life.
Obama: I don’t know if my ambition has ever fully been able to actualize itself because of the nature of what me and my husband have done.
Obama: Right. It was the team ambition. And I went along, arguably kicking and screaming, right? And you know, I think I’m now at a stage in my life where all my choices are mine. Now I can say that whatever I’m doing from this point on is about my ambition.
And that’s fairly new, right? Because as a working mother, I – you know, I think all of that stuff, it kind of cut my ambitions short a little bit. Because I had to make a set of decisions: “OK, my husband’s over here, I’ve got these kids over here. I don’t know if I can afford to be ambitious right now. So I have to take a step back.” Even though ambition is there, I can see where I can make more money, I could do that. But, you know, I got these little kids that I love. And I do wanna go to the Halloween parade, and I wanna – you know?
So I think I kind of squelched my ambition. But now is a time for me to embrace my own ambition and to define it for me. So maybe the answer is, “We’ll see.” Because I think I’m just now stepping, fully stepping, into my own ambition. And right now, I have not regretted it.
Obama: My husband thinks this is morbid, but at 61, you know, if I am lucky, if I am truly blessed, I have like 25 more summers. If you’re not mindful about time, like – we’ve been out of office for 10 years. What happened? What happened in those 10 years, you know? I mean, I did a lot, right? I mean, two, three books, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There’s a lot that happened, but it went by fast.
And I’m at the stage of life where I want the next 10 years to go by slowly. Because guess what? I love life. I love my life. I love life. But what I feel is that if I’m not mindful about it, the years slip away. And you wind up spending a year doing what? Did you do anything you wanted to? Did you spend time with the people that you wanted to spend time with, doing the things that you wanted to do? And there’s a time in life for all young people where you just don’t have that luxury ’cause you’re grinding and growing and building. You haven’t earned it yet. And you should be out there doing and shaking and baking.
But with 25 more summers, I wanna feel each one of them. I wanna be like, “Woo, this year. Woo. This was slow.” It’s like, “I didn’t do much of anything. Did I accomplish anything? I got bored. I read another b
Content adapted by the team from the original source: https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5422437/michelle-obama-interview-barack-family-life
Leave a comment