Brigitte Macron rarely talks about her personal life, and the interviews she has given can even be counted on one hand. Her romance with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has been the subject of headlines, speculation and hundreds of controversies. A relationship that could have ended in tragedy – as the newspaper Le Figaro noted at the time – but which 16 years later remains unscathed and even more strengthened. A story that both decided to tell first-hand, before other voices did so without any shame. They explained it in the documentary Brigitte Macron, un roman français, broadcast by France 3, and left phrases as famous as the promise that Macron made to her lover: “I will return and marry you.”
The relationship between the two aroused the morbidity of more than one as a result of a notable age difference between them. Macron was 15 years old when he met Brigitte Auzière, a 40-year-old married woman with three children who was also his theater teacher at the Providence Jesuit school in Amiens, northern France. Three decades have passed since then. Now, Macron, 45, and Brigitte, 70, have just given an interview on Paris Match to clarify some details of their love relationship.
“For me, such a young boy was something terrifying,” confesses the first lady of France. Since ancient times, the relationship between student and teacher has been mythologized. “It was love at first sight, at last sight, at any sight,” said Vladimir Nabokov in his iconic book Lolita. Something similar happened to Macron, he fell madly in love with her theater teacher and declared his great love for her, despite the opposition of her parents, both renowned doctors. “Emmanuel had to leave for Paris. I told myself that he would fall in love with someone his age. It didn't happen,” says Brigitte. The current president of France was sent to study away from his beloved, to avoid the scandal that such a disparate relationship would cause for the family. It was in 2006 when she officially divorced her husband at the time, André-Louis Auzière, with whom she had three children: Sébastien, Laurence and Tiphaine. “The only obstacle was my children. I took the time necessary not to ruin their lives. That lasted ten years. You can imagine what they were hearing. But on the other hand, I didn't want to miss out on my life,” she tells Paris Match. During all that time in which the young Macron was exiled in the French capital, they maintained contact practically daily, as detailed in the documentary broadcast by France 3. A year after her divorce, she married Macron. The relationship between the two caused a great scandal. “I don't know how my parents, who were a model of fidelity and good education, would have reacted to our marriage,” Brigitte now confesses. Her mother died in 1996.
Those 25 years of age difference have haunted them, but have also reinforced them as a solid couple that breaks taboos in politics. “There is not a single day that does not surprise me. I had never seen such intellectual capacity. I had brilliant students and none had his abilities. I have always admired him,” the first lady of France ends by saying, today louder and clearer than ever.
