She was old enough to be his mother when they first met, yet French President Emmanuel Macron refused to let go of his first love.
Macron was just 15 when he met Lady Brigitte who was 39 and a drama teacher at the Catholic Providence school in Amiens, northern France. Worried about his love affair with his teacher, Macron’s parents sent him away to Paris and Lady Brigitte thought she had seen the last of him, but he came back for her.
“For me, such a young boy was crippling. Emmanuel had to leave for Paris. I told myself that he would fall in love with someone his [own] age. It didn’t happen,” Mrs. Macron told Paris Match magazine .
The couple, with a 24-year age gap, married in 2007. Becoming a very youthful stepfather at the age of 29 to her three adult children, he told them at the wedding reception: “Thanks for accepting us, a not-quite-normal couple.”
Mrs. Macron said her children were the “obstacle” which caused her to wait a decade before marrying the president.
She said: “I took time so I would not wreck their lives. That lasted ten years, the time to put them on the rails. You can imagine what they were hearing. But I didn’t want to miss out on my life.”
Mr Macron has become France’s youngest ever President at the age of 39 – the same age as his wife, now 64, was when they met.
Praising her husband, the First Lady said his sharp intellect still surprises her every day.
She said: “I have never seen such a memory … such an intellectual capacity. I had many brilliant pupils and none had his capability. I have always admired him.” With agency report
