Exclusive: Barack Obama Shares Story About Going to a College Party With Michelle

President Barack Obama just recalled a party he went to with Michelle in the early days of their relationship, and it sounds like the most “college girl introducing her boyfriend to her friends” story ever. 

In an exclusive clip from the next episode of Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen’s podcast, “Renegades: Born in the USA,” the former POTUS tells his cohost about the time he felt like a “misfit” at a party with Michelle and a bunch of “young professionals.”

“I remember the first time, you know, she invites me to a party with a bunch of her, you know, friends and they’re all these young professionals,” he begins. “I am very much the misfit, you know…I had, like, three shirts. I had one plate. And I lived in these scruffy apartments and all of my furniture was scavenged from out of the street.”

Apparently, Michelle was driving a Saab at the time and joining wine clubs while Barack was going the “other” direction. “If I went down the path of starting to want stuff, that was a hamster wheel you never got off of,” he tells Springsteen about how he felt in college. Meanwhile, he says Michelle was “was very clear about who she was.”

But back to the party. “So, I’m with all these young professionals. They’re looking all like Richard Gere in American Gigolo,” he says. “And I walk in, and I got kind of a—I had one sports jacket that didn’t quite fit me right that I’d gotten off some discount store.”

Barack Obama does feel like his experiences with money and wealth were a part of his “power” as a politician. “People could sense that Michelle and I had lived through and understood what it was like to have a whole bunch of student loans to pay,” he adds. “What it was like to have some credit card debt and what it was like to have to say no to things. And it wasn’t an act, right?”

You can listen to the clip below or wait for the full episode of “Renegades: Born in the USA,” which drops on Spotify on March 15.