The President and First Lady are speaking out for the first time about the challenges they face in their marriage.

In a just-released audio tape, a very candid Michelle tells The New York Times Sunday magazine, "The truth is the bumps happen to everybody all the time, and they are continuous [...] Marriage is hard. But going into it no one ever tells you that. They just tell you, 'Do you love him? What's the dress look like?' You focus on all the ups. So then when you hit some bumps a lot of young people think something's wrong with it, it's broken because nobody ever talked about the bumps."

It was an unusual joint interview in the Oval Office with both Michelle and the President. The first couple agreed that some of the past issues in their marriage came from the fact that prior to last November's election victory they hadn't lived full-time under the same roof since 1996.  

INSIDE EDITION's Diane McInerney asked, "Why do you think they're being so candid about their marriage?"

"There's a huge amount of interest in the Obamas, whether we're speaking about them individually, or as a couple, or as a family, and I guess they just decided to go sort of on the offensive and talk about themselves before people started writing their own narratives," explained Politico's Beth Frerking.

The Obamas' playful relationship was evident during the interview with The Times's Washington correspondent, Jodi Kantor. Michelle and the President's aides can be heard cracking up in the background as he admitted Michelle was the boss in the family.

"My staff worries a lot more about what the First Lady thinks than they worry about what I think," he joked.

But last night, the President took on a much more somber tone during a surprise midnight visit to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. He was on hand to honor 18 Americans killed in Afghanistan this week. The President saluted the coffins as the bodies of the fallen men were taken to a mortuary.