Who is Brigitte Macron, Emmanuel Macron’s wife and First Lady of France?
The French first lady is 24 years older than her husband, whom she met while she was a high school teacher in Amiens.
The President of France and his wife are attending Charles III’s Coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey in London.
Macrons: a 24-year age difference
Her maiden name is Brigitte Marie-Claude Trogneux and she is a native of Amiens, where she was born on 13 April 1953, having just turned 69 during the campaign for the presidential election. She is nicknamed ‘Bibi’ and has been married to Emmanuel Macron since 2007. She was previously married to banker André-Louis Auzière (1974-2006), whom she divorced just a year before.
Brigitte is 24 years older than her husband, Emmanuel having been born on 21 December 1977, also in Amiens. The French First Lady has three children, all from her previous marriage, although their relationship with their step-father is exceptional. Indeed, the first lady’s seven grandchildren consider Macron to be their grandfather.
She was Emmanuel’s teacher in the 1990s
Brigitte Macron was a secondary school professor and until 2015 taught literature at the Lycée Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague in Paris, a leading elite school. But before ending her working life there, Brigitte worked at Collège Lucie-Berger in Strasbourg (1980s) and at Lycée la Providence in Amiens (1990s). It was here that she met Emmanuel Macron, with whom she had an intimate relationship when he was her underage pupil.
For years there was some controversy about her sexuality, as it was said that she was a transsexual woman. In 2021, however, this rumour was disproved. It was Natacha Rey, a French ultra-right-wing internet user and QAnon sympathiser, who perpetrated this theory, which had never been very credible.