When Michelle Obama Revealed the ‘Irritating’ Way Barack Proposed: “That Ought To Shut You Up”

Michelle Obama and Barack Obama have had over 31 years of a blissful marriage, but it seems the proposal that led to this amazing marriage was not as smooth as the journey since has been for the former First Couple.

Back in December 2018, as part of a promotional tour for her book Becoming, the former First Lady appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and spilled some juicy details on how the 44th President popped the question.

Even before he popped the question, Barack tried to showcase he was against the idea of marriage. “We would have these deep discussions about whether marriage was really necessary if two people really loved each other, and he would make his lawyerly arguments, and I would be irritated,” the former First Lady revealed.

“And that’s how he decided to propose to me, by starting that argument at dinner on the night he decided to propose,” Michelle revealed about the dinner, where the couple were celebrating Barack’s passing the bar. “He picks a fight, and so I deliver because I too am a lawyer and I have my points to be made,” Michelle said, laughing, per POPSUGAR .

Michelle started listing her own pointers in favor of marriage, but Barack reportedly had another surprise in store. “And by then, dessert was coming out and the waiter put a platter in front of me with a little box, with a ring on it. And in the middle of the argument, I was like ‘Whaaat? He opened up the box and he said, ‘Now that ought to shut you up.’ And it did,” she told the host.

Michelle explains in detail how she felt in the aftermath of the proposal in her book. An excerpt obtained by Bustle reported that she wrote, “Eventually, our waiter came around holding a dessert plate, covered by a silver lid. He slid it in front of me and lifted the cover. I was almost too miffed to even look down, but when I did, I saw a dark velvet box where the chocolate cake was supposed to be.”

“Inside was a diamond ring,” Michelle wrote, adding that she was pleasantly surprised at the occasion, “Barack looked at me playfully. He’d baited me. It had all been a ruse. It took me a second to dismantle my anger and slide into joyful shock. He’d riled me up because this was the very last time he would invoke his inane marriage argument, ever again, as long as we both should live.”

The couple, who met in 1989 when Barack was actually supposed to be mentored by Michelle at a Chicago law firm, got married in 1992. In his 2020 autobiography, A Promised Land, Barack talked about his courting of Michelle and the initial stages of their relationship in the book. “She was tall, beautiful, funny, outgoing, generous, and wickedly smart — and I was smitten almost from the second I saw her,” he wrote.