The woman behind France’s presidential favourite
‘She helped make me who I am’ — starting when she was 39 and he was 15
“They’re an atypical couple and this strengthens their relationship,” MARC FERRACCI CAMPAIGN ADVISER AND A WITNESS AT COUPLE’S WEDDING
If her husband becomes France’s next president, Brigitte Macron will be the most unusual first lady the country has ever seen.
While French first ladies have a checkered history — making headlines for excessive spending, extramarital affairs, treason and even murder — they’ve never been as central a figure in the formative years of their husbands’ lives as Brigitte has been for front-runner Emmanuel Macron.
Brigitte Macron, who is 24 years older than the candidate, has been his guide and coach since he was 15, and is playing an active role in his campaign, advising him on speeches and effectively helping set his agenda.
“Emmanuel Macron wouldn’t have been able to embark on this adventure without her,” said Marc Ferracci, a campaign adviser and a witness at the couple’s 2007 wedding. “Her presence is essential for him.”
With one week to go before the first round of the vote, multiple polls show that Macron is a strong favourite to make it to the second round and will likely face the National Front’s Marine Le Pen, whom he is expected to defeat with a large margin in the decisive round.
“If I’m elected — no, sorry, when we are elected — she will be there, with a role and a place,” the 39-year-old candidate said of Brigitte, 63, on March 8 during a speech in Paris. “I owe her a lot. She helped make me who I am.”
Many of the wives of French leaders have found a place in the history books: Queen Marie-Antoinette’s lavish spending contributed to the fall of the French monarchy in the late 18th century and Empress Josephine was divorced because she couldn’t give Napoleon an heir. In 1914, prime minister Joseph Caillaux’s wife Henriette killed the editor of the newspaper Le Figaro because he was a political threat to her husband.
If the Macrons become the next residents of the Élysée Palace, Brigitte will join a list of colourful first ladies. In the 1980s and 1990s, while Socialist president François Mitterrand led a double life with the mother of his illegitimate daughter Mazarine, his wife Danielle had a love life of her own. Bernadette Chirac suggested to a biographer that she silently put up with the many infidelities of her husband Jacques, while Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife Cecilia left him for her lover just six months after he took office in 2007. In 2014, president François Hollande’s partner Valérie Trierweiler published a bitter tell-all book on him after his liaison with actress Julie Gayet became public.
For Macron and his wife, the challenge if he takes office in May will be to not let their unusual personal history — the cou- ple’s age difference is the same as Donald and Melania Trump, only in reverse — become a distraction. The next French president enters a post-Brexit-vote, postTrump-election world facing a domestic economy that has made an anemic recovery.
An outspoken five-foot-four-inch former high school French literature and Latin teacher, Brigitte comes from a bourgeois family renowned for its chocolate factory in the Northern French town of Amiens. She was a drama coach at the private Jesuit school in the town in 1992 when she met 15-year-old Macron. He acted in her theatre pieces, with their association slowly developing into a romance that pushed her to divorce her husband and the father of her three children.
Even after more than a decade-long marriage, their extraordinary union raises eyebrows. Aware that they are break- ing the codes of bourgeois and conservative France, the independent candidate and his partner of more than 20 years have been laying the groundwork to preempt any potential personal attacks.
“They’re an atypical couple and this strengthens their relationship,” Ferracci said.
To get ahead of the story, they’ve opened the door to their lives, even being on the cover of glossy magazines like the biggestcirculation weekly Paris Match.
Macron has twice addressed rumours about his alleged homosexuality, raising the issue unprompted at a political rally and dismissing it with a joke about needing a hologram to run a double life. He also hasn’t been afraid to tackle the student-who-married-his-teacher question head on.
“We don’t have a classic family, that’s an undeniable reality,” he said during a political meeting, with Brigitte at his side. “There is no less love in our family.”
People who have worked closely with Macron say Brigitte is one of the few people he trusts.
Alexis Kohler, Macron’s chief of staff when he was economy minister in Hollande’s government, recalls how engaged she was in his role. “She attended agenda meetings when he was a minister,” he said.
Brigitte cites Montaigne to explain their relationship. “We rub and polish each other’s brains,” she said in 2015, echoing the French Renaissance philosopher’s words. The couple thrives on intellectual confrontation and shares a passion for literature, people who know them say. Brigitte Macron declined to be interviewed by Bloomberg.
Macron has pledged that if he’s elected, his wife will have an official status — a first for France — “but without a salary.”