Barack and Michelle Obama Step Out for New York City Date Night After Addressing Marriage Rumors

Former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama got all dressed up for a stylish date night in New York City.

On Tuesday, May 27, the political power couple got a bite to eat at the restaurant in the Lowell Hotel.

For the outing, the former first lady looked stylish in a long black dress with sheer sleeves and ruffles. She paired it with low black heels and carried a handbag. Statement-making bangles and earrings completed the look.

Michelle, 61, had a beaming smile on her face and appeared to be enjoying her time with Barack, 63.

Their joint outing comes a few weeks after Michelle shot down rumors about tensions in her marriage with the former president.

Whispers that they were having problems picked up steam after she skipped President Donald Trump’s January inauguration. Michelle was also not present for former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral earlier that month.

During an appearance on The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett podcast in May, Michelle firmly shut down those whispers, saying that “everybody would know” if they “were having problems.”

“I’m not a martyr. I would be problem solving in public. ‘Let me tell you what he did,’ “ she said.

Michelle added that she felt very secure in her marriage. “The beauty of my husband and our partnership is that neither one of us was really ever gonna quit at it, ’cause that’s not who we are,” she said.

“And I know that about him. He knows that about me,” she stressed.

She also explained why she was absent for some of these recent outings, saying that she is “finally owning my wisdom” at 61. 

Michelle noted that she “never” would have skipped something like the inauguration before. Her perspective has changed.

“What do I want to do in this moment? As a box-checking, a person who has been box-checking her whole life, doing the right thing, trying to always be an example, always going high, I think now I earned a little bit of ‘well, how do I feel?’ “ she explained.

Michelle continued by adding, “Do I want to upend my life and take this trip and leave my peace and my children for this? I didn’t have to, but that was my choice.” 

During an episode of her IMO With Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson podcast, Michelle pointed out the public was quick to presume that she was not attending the events due to struggles with Barack.

“People couldn’t believe that I was saying no for any other reason, they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart,” she said in April. “It took everything in my power to not do the thing that was perceived as right, but do the things that was right for me, that was a hard thing for me to do.”

The same month, Barack said that he was “in a deep deficit” with Michelle after he left the White House. While speaking with Hamilton College President Steven Tepper, he shared, “So I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things.”

The couple wed in 1992 and are parents to daughters Malia, 26, and Sasha, 23.