Macron’s unusual love story carries on French tradition

Emmanuel Macron, the fresh-faced 39-year-old who won the first round of a hotly contested French presidential election on Sunday, did not have a political party before he started the En Marche! movement a year ago.

But, as pointed out by The Independent, Macron, who looks poised to beat Marine Le Pen for the top seat, shares a more personal connection to France’s past presidents: their unusual love lives.

The romance between Macron and his wife and potential future first lady Brigitte, is somewhat unusual. She, at 64, is 25 years older than her husband.

More unusually, they met when he was 15 and she was the married school teacher mother of one of his classmates.

As one story reported by The Independent goes, she came to know of him when her daughter Laurence, came home raving about “a crazy boy who knows everything about everything”.

Emmanuel Macron (R), head of the political movement En Marche ! (Onwards !) and candidate for the 2017 presidential election, and his wife Brigitte Trogneux arrive for a lunch break at the mountain top during a campaign visit in Bagneres de Bigorre, in the Pyrenees mountain, France, April 12, 2017. Reuters

The two came to know each other when he asked her to help him rewrite a play to include several new roles. They began to meet regularly.

“Little by little, I was won over by his intelligence,” Brigitte admitted. “I still haven’t measured all its depths.”

But, if media reports are to be believed, there was no impropriety and the two stuck closely to French law, which sets the age of consent at 18 in situations where one person is in a position of authority over another.

For a time the two parted, the married teacher telling the teenager he had to leave and finish his schooling.

She recollected his response to Paris Match in a 2016 interview: “At 17, Emmanuel told me ‘Whatever you do, I will marry you’!”

They tied the knot in October 2007, nearly two years after she divorced her former husband. He was 29, she 54.

“Emmanuel said ‘We’re going to shut people up,’” Brigitte recalled.

By then Macron had, after a rocky start, won the approval of her family. In his wedding speech he thanked his new wife’s children “for loving us as we are.”

In his book ‘Revolution’ he would describe the wedding as “official consecration of a love that was at first clandestine, often hidden and misunderstood by many.”

Though the situation may seem unusual, it hardly raises eyebrows in the context of the French presidency.

After all, incumbent Socialist president Francois Hollande was caught emerging from the home of a French actress 17 years his junior while hiding his face with a scooter helmet in 2014.

The incident led to the end of his relationship with official partner Valerie Trierweiler and allowed Hollande to appoint the mother of his four children, Ségolène Royal, to his cabinet.

Emmanuel Macron (2ndL), head of the political movement En Marche ! (Onwards !) and candidate for the 2017 presidential election, and his wife Brigitte Trogneux have a lunch break at the mountain top during a campaign visit in Bagneres de Bigorre, in the Pyrenees mountain, France, April 12, 2017. Reuters

And, as The Independent reports, his nickname among the French is Monsieur Normal.

Perhaps for good reason. Former president Valerie Giscard d’Estaing, elected in 1974, saw his popularity soar after he was involved in a road accident with a milk float while driving his mistress home.

There was also Socialist Francois Mitterand, who, during most of his 14-year presidency, concealed that he spent most evenings with his mistress and secret daughter Mazarine.

Mitterand’s successor, right-winger Jacques Chirac, came by his nickname of ‘cinq minutes, douche comprise’ (five minutes, shower included) for, as The Independent puts it, his ‘brisk efficiency’

In such company, the Macrons quiet domestic situation seems quite muted.

But as 33-year-old Tiphaine, the youngest of Brigitte’s daughters has said: “I know few couples so happy.”