Michelle Obama Reveals How Her Marriage To Barack Improved After Malia, 21, & Sasha, 18, Moved Out

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Michelle and Barack Obama were ‘choking up’ after sending their daughters Malia and Sasha off to college, but the emotional farewell did have one benefit for their marriage. The former First Lady revealed what that was to Oprah Winfrey!

Now that Michelle Obama, 56, and Barack Obama, 58, are empty nesters, they are finally “seeing each other again.” That’s what Michelle, former First Lady of the United States, confessed to her friend Oprah Winfrey, 66, as she sat opposite the talk show host at the Brooklyn stop of Oprah’s 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus tour on Feb. 8. With Malia, 21, mid-way into her third year at Harvard University and Sasha, 18, having just begun her collegiate career at the University of Michigan, parents Michelle and Barack can refocus their attentions on themselves — and their new home! They recently took a $11.75 million mansion in Martha’s Vineyard, located in picturesque Massachusetts, off the market in Dec. 2019.

Michelle and Obama, who are both devoted parents, deserve the one-on-one time. “Parenting takes up a lot of emotional space,” Michelle admitted to Oprah during her time on the stage. Later adding to this point, the former FLOTUS said, “Raising a family together is a hard thing. It takes a toll. But if you’re with the person, if you know why you are with them. You understand that there was a friendship and a foundation there…You can have chunks of hard, bad times and if that’s how you define your marriage by just the hard times, then you’ll miss the truth of what’s really there.”

Of course, this doesn’t mean Michelle and her husband were anything less than tearful to see their two children pursue degrees. While reminiscing on Sasha starting college last fall in 2019, Michelle amusingly recalled, “We tried to hold it together, to get [Sasha] in the car so she wouldn’t start crying, and then me and Barack, we bawled like little babies. Barack gets that ugly, loud cry.” Apparently, that “ugly, loud cry” was also present at Sasha’s high school graduation! But Michelle could relate — at another point in her conversation with Oprah, she said, “They’re [her children] going somewhere where they now live. That’s when it hits you. It’s like we all start choking up.”

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Now that Michelle and Barack are no longer living in the White House or with their kids, they have new focuses — like their new production company, Higher Ground Productions! The company won its first ever Academy Award for its documentary, American Factory, at the 2020 Oscars held just one day after Michelle sat down with Oprah. That called for a celebration between the production company’s owners, and Michelle and Obama sent their love via Twitter to the documentary’s directors, Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, on Feb. 9.