Brigitte Macron, France’s First Lady, has stated that she waited years before marrying Emmanuel to avoid ‘wrecking’ her children’s lives.
In a rare interview with Paris Match magazine, the 70-year-old revealed that she waited ten years to marry her husband, French President Emmanuel Macron, 45, for the sake of her three children, who are almost the same age as her younger partner.
Macron was 15 when he fell in love with Brigitte Auzière, who was 25 years his senior at the time. His theater teacher at the Catholic Providence school in Amiens, northern France, was the first lady, and Macron’s student was her daughter, Laurence.
Macron’s parents, who weren’t in support of their relationship, had to send him to Paris to go to another school, but yet he still desired to be with his teacher.
She said she told herself that, once Emmanuel was in Paris, he would ‘fall in love with someone his [own] age’, but that didn’t happen.
Brigitte gave up her job, but said the ‘only obstacles’ were her children, as she didn’t want to ‘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,’ she said.
Her son is three years older than Macron and her daughters, now aged 46 and 39, are of similar age to her second husband.
She also stated that she is unsure what her parents would have said about her marriage to her former student, but that her siblings would occasionally make fun of the rumors surrounding her and Macron’s relationship.
After divorcing her estranged spouse André-Louis Auzière the year before, she married Macron, a government worker in his late twenties at the time, in 2007.
The First Lady revealed a little more about the Macrons’ marriage, something she normally keeps quiet about aside from highlighting the hardships they faced in the early years of their relationship.
Despite already being married for 16 years, Brigitte said her husband still manages to surprise and amaze her with his impressive memory and intelligence.
‘I had many brilliant pupils and none had his capability. I have always admired him,’ she explained.