France’s power couple:
He was a schoolboy, she was his teacher. Now he is the President of France and she is his wife. William Langley investigates how Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron weathered the scandal of their relationship.
Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron – how they weathered the scandal of their relationship
In a blinding white dress and sky-high stilettos, Brigitte Macron is clattering across a cobbled courtyard in central Paris, trailing a whiff of expensive perfume and an already flagging entourage. Attempting to keep up is Melania Trump, the First Lady of the United States, whose husband, Donald, is in a meeting with Brigitte’s husband, Emmanuel, the recently elected President of France.
While the men talk politics, Brigitte has opted to give Melania a lightning tour of Paris. From Les Invalides, where the tomb of Napoleon lies beneath a soaring gilded dome, the pair heads down to the River Seine for a boat ride past the Tuileries, the former royal palace, and the Louvre museum, stepping ashore for a visit to Notre-Dame, the great medieval cathedral on the Île de la Cité.
Given how well the two First Ladies appear to be getting on, no one likes to mention that Melania probably knows Paris better than Brigitte does. The Slovenian-born ex-model worked here for three years in the 1990s, and as her former flatmate, Victoria Silvstedt, remembers, “We spent all day, every day, just running around the city looking for jobs.”
Brigitte comes from Amiens, a provincial town to the north, where she used to be a schoolteacher. To be more precise, she was Emmanuel’s schoolteacher. When they first met, she was 39 and married with three children. He was 15, the son of a neurologist and the cleverest boy in school, who “already seemed to know everything about everything”, Brigitte would later say.
They found themselves working together on the school play and, one evening, Emmanuel kissed her. Not just the familiar French bisous on both cheeks, but a proper kiss. And then the scandal erupted around them.
It still hasn’t completely abated. While France prides itself on having a sophisticated approach to matters of sex, the country is helplessly fascinated by the relationship of the now 39-yearold President and his 64-year-old wife. Talk of it fills magazine columns, online forums and swirls around the gossipy lunch tables of Paris.
The fascination comes with twinges of guilt. Is it sexist to find the passion between the pair… odd? After all, as plenty of people in Paris were pointing out, the age gap between the Trumps is almost exactly the same. Ah, but a rich, older man taking a beautiful younger woman as his wife is nothing unusual. Yet much of the Macrons’ back story is very unusual indeed.
Brigitte Marie-Claire Trogneux was born into a wealthy, ultra-respectable chocolate-making dynasty, whose expensive confections are prized among connoisseurs. Smart, pretty and energetic, she married a banker, André-Louis Auzière, and, as her children were growing up, returned to teaching at the local private school. She wasn’t unhappy with her life, suggests Anne Fulda, author of a book about the Macrons, but chafed at its constraints.
“I think there’s a bit of the Madame Bovary in her,” says Anne, referring to the famous French novel about a middle-class housewife desperate to escape the tedium of provincial life. “After meeting Emmanuel, she realised an entirely different life was possible.”
Yet first there were two outraged families to face. Emmanuel’s parents, aware of his regular visits to Brigitte’s house, had assumed he was interested in her teenage daughter, Laurence. It was only after picking up on the rumours swirling around town that they discovered he had fallen for his teacher and they took drastic action.
Emmanuel was hauled out of school and sent to complete his education in Paris. According to Anne Fulda, his mother, Françoise, then sought out Brigitte and, in an emotional confrontation, demanded she end the affair. When Brigitte pleaded that she could make no such promises, Françoise broke down, telling her, “You don’t understand. You have already had a life. My son will never have children!”
The age of consent in France is 15, but teachers who have sexual relations
with students under 18 can be jailed for up to three years. Intriguingly, the Macrons declined to bring charges. An acrimonious divorce between Brigitte and her furious, humiliated husband followed, and what had seemed likely to be a brief infatuation settled down into something resembling a regular romance.
By the time the couple married in 2007, Emmanuel was working as an investment banker, but his mind was already fixed on a career in politics. His family had accepted Brigitte and he had built a relationship with her children, but he realised that in order to fulfil his ultimate dream of leading France, his wife would need to win over the public, too.
In the run-up to this year’s election – when Emmanuel emerged from relative obscurity to become the country’s youngest ever President – an audacious but high-risk plan was hatched. Rather than hide Brigitte away in the background, as many advisors suggested, she would be placed at the very heart of the campaign.
“It was a gamble that the French would accept her,” says journalist and commentator Anne-Elisabeth Moutet. “But it was based on sound thinking. We may be known for producing gorgeous young models and starlets, but France has a real reverence for older women. Napoleon’s wife was several years older than he was and the French kings often preferred to take older mistresses. We have a saying, ‘C’est dans les vieux pots qu’on fait les meilleures soupes’ [It’s in old saucepans that you make the best soup]. And then there was Mimi.”
The exotic figure of Michèle “Mimi” Marchand, a veteran Paris celebrityfixer and paparazzi agent, was the Macron campaign’s least probable, but most inspired signing. A smokyvoiced 70-year-old who founded France’s first lesbian nightclub, Mimi put Brigitte on the cover of masscirculation magazines wearing swimsuits, shortened her skirts, brushed out her hair and told her, “You’re beautiful. Go out and dazzle them!” At her Paris office, Mimi modestly plays down her role, saying, “I told her it was the right thing to do.” She hints that Brigitte was self-conscious and uncomfortable in the spotlight, and worried that too much exposure could backfire on her.
“There was an obstinate rumour going around before the election that Emmanuel was gay and the marriage was basically a sham,” says AnneElisabeth. “Mimi turned them into an attractive, stylish, loving couple whose age difference seemed irrelevant, and it did wonders for them.”
Following in Brigitte’s high-speed footsteps around Paris, it is clear that the image-grooming, although wildly successful, is only part of the story. She has clearly grasped the nuances that make being a President’s wife more than just a ceremonial job.
The Macrons and the Trumps were booked for dinner at the celebrated Le Jules Verne restaurant, sitting
125 metres up the Eiffel Tower and offering a breathtaking night-time panorama of the city. It is fair to say that Donald Trump’s visit had not been universally welcomed by the public below and one area of concern was how the US President would handle the challenges of French haute cuisine. “Horror! His favourite meal is overdone steak with ketchup,” reported Le Parisien newspaper, noting that the teetotal US President likes to wash his grub down with tumblers of Coke. How would he cope in a place where a six-course dinner can cost 320 euros (about $500) a head? Fortunately, Brigitte had been busy behind the scenes.
The boss of the Jules Verne is Alain Ducasse, France’s most decorated chef, who just happens to be a personal friend and political supporter of the Macrons. During the May election campaign, he praised Emmanuel’s intellect and his “great understanding of food”. As the chef set to work, Brigitte’s aides let it be known that she had discreetly ensured that nothing too complicated will be served to The Donald. In fact, he got a posh version of beef with truffle sauce, followed by chocolate pudding, and left beaming.
Although the title of First Lady does not formally exist in France (Brigitte is working on it), the President’s wife traditionally has a fiendishly difficult job. She must be an ambassador for the country’s world-leading fashion industry, requiring her to look sensationally chic and perfectly coiffured at all times, while devoting
“To fulfil his dream of leading France, his wife would need to win over the public, too.”
“He is the best, cleverest man I have ever known and that is his teacher talking!”
herself to numerous good causes and serving as the châtelaine of the magnificent official residence, the Elysée Palace.
Brigitte has taken these duties a stage further. On the campaign trail, she was constantly at her husband’s side, attending strategy meetings, editing speeches and fine-tuning his delivery, which she reportedly felt was too hurried and high-pitched. While little is known of her political views, she clearly intends to have an important say in whatever the Macron presidency delivers.
Another enduring problem for French Presidents’ wives is the prodigious ability of their husbands to be unfaithful. François Mitterrand, who served in the 1980s and 90s, maintained two families on opposite banks of the Seine. His successor, Jacques Chirac, was allegedly known to the female staff of his party HQ as “three minutes including a shower”, while the last incumbent, François Hollande, was famously caught arriving on a scooter at the backstreet love nest he rented for his mistress, actress Julie Gayet.
While no hint of hanky-panky has ever attached to Emmanuel, there are still some in France who struggle to accept that his relationship with Brigitte can be as genuine as it seems. On the fringes of respectable debate, it isn’t hard to find suggestions that he suffers from a “mummy complex”, linked to some kind of psycho-sexual yearning for a strong female authority figure, and that while he may have the top job, it’s really Brigitte who is telling him what to do.
For now, the Macrons can ignore the cynics and sceptics. Emmanuel’s ratings are healthy and Brigitte is winning plaudits for everything from her stylish outfits – predominantly Louis Vuitton – to the charity work she has taken on. At the Elysée, where she now has a large private office with a staff of five, she receives 200 letters a day – far more, according to her chief aide Pierre-Olivier Costa, than any President’s wife in memory.
There are Brigitte T-shirts in souvenir shops, Brigitte posters in café windows and Brigitte memes bouncing around the internet. Of the Macrons’ innerlife together, we know little beyond what they tell us, which is that they have been completely in love and happy together since that first kiss in the drama studio 24 years ago.
“He is the best, cleverest man I have ever known,” Brigitte told a television interviewer last year, adding with a giggle, “and that is his teacher talking!” Emmanuel shrugged, saying simply, “Without Brigitte, I wouldn’t have been anyone.”
They certainly wouldn’t have been standing beside the Trumps at the bottom of Paris’ grandest avenue, the Champs-Elysées, watching a fly-past to celebrate France’s national holiday. Brigitte’s size 8 figure is tightly encased in yet more Vuitton – this time, a short blue dress with beige stilettos – and beside the leggy Melania she looks tiny. Yet France can’t take its eyes off her and, these days, you sense that she doesn’t mind at all.