PARIS: When they first met, he was 15, she was a married 40-year old teacher coaching him in a school play. Set to enter the Elysee presidential palace as First Lady, Brigitte Macron will keep coaching her husband, but on a bigger stage now.
Newly-elected French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife, now 64, has been constantly by his side during his campaign, managing his agenda, editing his speeches and advising him on his stage presence. For his victory speech after winning the first round of the election two weeks ago, Macron brought his wife onto the podium and thanked her, to long applause.
“Brigitte, always present, and even more now, without whom I would not be me,” an emotional Macron said as hundreds of his supporters shouted her name.
Born Brigitte Trogneux April 13, 1953, the youngest of six children in a family of wealthy chocolate makers in the northern town of Amiens, she married a banker with whom she had three children.
In 1993, in the Providence Jesuit college where she taught French and drama, the young Macron acted in a play under her supervision. The next year, the two rewrote a play together, adapting it to include more roles. “Little by little, I came totally under the spell of the intelligence of this young boy,” Trogneux told France 3 TV.
As rumours started to fly about the relationship, Macron left Amiens to complete his last year of high school at the prestigious Lycee Henri IV in Paris. Asked about what role Trogneux would play at the Elysee if he were elected, Macron has said that he will propose that within the first weeks of his presidency a formal, albeit unremunerated, role is established for the First Lady and that she will have her say in how that role is defined.
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