- A rumor about an alleged affair between former President Barack Obama and actor Jennifer Aniston has circulated since summer 2024, largely fueled by media personalities’ claims of hearing the rumor from credible — but unnamed — sources.
- Former first lady Michelle Obama’s absence from former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral and President Donald Trump’s inauguration, both in January 2025, further fed speculation about the state of the Obamas’ marriage.
- Aniston denied the rumor of a romantic relationship with Barack Obama during an October 2024 interview. Obama has made no public statement on the subject, but did post a photo of himself and Michelle holding hands to Instagram in January 2025.
Since summer 2024, a rumor has circulated about an alleged romantic relationship between former President Barack Obama and actor Jennifer Aniston. At the time of this writing, Obama was still married to former first lady Michelle Obama, whose absence from two high-profile political events in January 2025 sparked further speculation that the Obamas’ marriage might be coming to an end.
Multiple readers wrote in asking us to look into the rumors, examples of which have appeared on social media platforms such as X (archived), Instagram (archived), and Reddit (archived). The rumors have also appeared in multiple high-profile podcasts and radio shows, as well as in articles by media outlets including the Daily Mail and The Cut.
(X user @LangmanVince)
In short, at the time of this writing there was no concrete evidence to support the rumor, despite its persistence. Obama has made no public statement about either Aniston or any potential divorce, although he did post a photo of himself and Michelle Obama holding hands on his official Instagram account in January 2025. Aniston has flatly denied having a romantic relationship with Obama, as we’ll discuss in more detail below.
We’ve reached out to representatives for both Aniston and Obama, and will update this story if and when we hear back.
How the Rumor Started
The rumor first gained widespread traction due to a July 7, 2024, subscriber-only episode of the celebrity gossip podcast “Who? Weekly.” That episode opened with hosts Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber describing a rumor that the Obamas were living separate lives and that Barack Obama was dating Aniston.
Around the 6:48 time stamp of that episode, Weber summarized the rumor, which she said she believed, as follows: “Michelle and Barack are living separate lives, and Barack is f—ing Jennifer Aniston.” Finger said he learned about the rumor independently from Weber, and that he believed it.
Neither host identified a source by name, although Weber said the rumor came from “reliable sources” connected in some way to Obama’s production company. Weber also briefly mentioned comedian John Mulaney, but did not explain his connection to the rumor.
In a summary of the episode, Finger and Weber linked to a 2014 piece from the Economist that mentioned an “affair” between Obama and Aniston. That Economist piece, it’s worth pointing out, was a satirical essay that imagined a hypothetical version of American politics based on the premise that the U.S. shared the French attitude toward scandal — it did not contain any factual reporting regarding any relationship between Obama and Aniston.
Around a month after the podcast, on Aug. 5, 2024, celebrity gossip magazine In Touch ran a cover story about the rumor with the headline “The Truth About Jen & Barack!” (In Touch does not appear to have ever made the article available on its website; we consulted the version that appeared in the print issue through the digital magazine archive Flipster.)
The In Touch article included several quotes from an unnamed “Hollywood source” who claimed to have personal knowledge of the situation. According to that source, Obama and Aniston had been spending a significant amount of time together, but were “not having an affair.” However, according to the source, Michelle Obama was “not thrilled” about the pair’s close friendship.
The same article also included a statement from a representative for Aniston, who said that Aniston did not have any “personal friendship” with the former president, although she was “a fan.”
Two months after the In Touch article, Aniston directly addressed the rumors during an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Oct. 3, 2024. The relevant segment begins around the 3:51 time stamp of the clip embedded below.
In that interview, Aniston said she was “not mad” at the rumor, but that it was “absolutely untrue.” She also said that she had only met Obama once, and that she had a closer relationship with Michelle.
Resurgence of the Rumor in January 2025
Media coverage of the rumor temporarily calmed down after Aniston’s October 2024 denial of the claims. However, things changed in January 2025 when rumors of problems in the Obamas’ marriage began to circulate again following Michelle Obama’s absence from two events that all the other spouses of living former presidents attended.
First, on Jan. 9, Michelle Obama skipped the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter. CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reported that the former first lady’s representatives had told him she was in Hawaii and unable to attend the funeral due to a scheduling conflict.
Next, on Jan. 14, The Associated Press reported that the Office of Barack and Michelle Obama had released a statement saying that Michelle would not accompany her husband to the Jan. 20 Trump inauguration. That statement did not give a reason for her absence.
The following day, on Jan. 15, writer Jessica Reed Kraus claimed (archived) in her Substack newsletter “House Inhabit” that she had received a message from a source confirming the affair rumors. Kraus did not identify the source of the message, which said of Obama:
He’s with Jennifer Aniston. My old manager, now a friend, is connected to her inner circle. At a gathering with Jennifer’s friends, the affair came up casually—Jennifer herself admitted it. They were sitting with a psychic, which makes it sound surreal, but it’s definitely not a secret among her closest friends.
Kraus wrote of the rumor, “For now, it’s all whispers. But the whispers are getting louder.”
On Jan. 17, Obama posted a photo of himself and Michelle celebrating her birthday at a restaurant.
(@barackobama on Instagram)
The caption of that photo read:
Happy birthday to the love of my life, @MichelleObama. You fill every room with warmth, wisdom, humor, and grace – and you look good doing it. I’m so lucky to be able to take on life’s adventures with you. Love you!
The photo, which showed the Obamas holding hands across a large table, did not put the rumors about a possible divorce to rest for some media figures.
Among them was Meghan McCain, whose father, John McCain, was Obama’s opponent in the 2008 presidential election. On a Jan. 22 episode of her podcast “Citizen McCain,” McCain discussed the rumored Obama divorce (without mentioning Aniston) with guest Tara Palmeri, a senior political correspondent for the news platform Puck. Both McCain and Palmeri stated that they had personally heard the divorce rumor from credible sources, although neither named anyone specific.
The next day, on Jan. 23, the journalist and political commentator Megyn Kelly addressed both the divorce rumor and the affair rumor on an episode of her “Megyn Kelly Show.” Kelly specifically mentioned Kraus’ Jan. 15 newsletter, saying of Kraus, “She’s been right about a lot, this gal.”
However, Kelly also acknowledged that “we don’t know” the truth about the rumors, and noted that Aniston had publicly denied claims of her involvement with Obama back in October 2024, as mentioned above.
Ultimately, at the time of this writing there was no concrete evidence to back the claims that Aniston and Obama were romantically involved, nor that Barack and Michelle Obama were planning to separate. However, the rumor has persisted for months, even despite Aniston’s denial of it — largely because multiple media personalities have asserted that their unnamed sources for the rumor were credible.
We’ll update this story if new evidence emerges.
