FRENCH KISS
How French President Emmanuel Macron, 39, seduced gran, 64, who he fell for at FIFTEEN
EMMANUEL Macron is the youngest President in France history after smashing rival Marine Le Pen in an explosive election victory.
And with the dapper 39-year-old in office, the country's new First Lady is a 64-year-old grandmother of seven.
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He first fell for his now wife Brigitte at 15, when she was his 39-year-old drama teacher.
Macron’s single-minded pursuit of his teacher, then a married mother of three, was a hint of the way he would later seduce the French public.
“They were having private meetings when Emmanuel was just 15,” said one ex-classmate at the private school in Amiens, run by strict Roman Catholic Jesuits.
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“She thought he was very creative and encouraged him to be as grown up as possible. She used to keep him back for extra work. It was the talk of the school.”
Another said: “She was charmed by his literary talent. He wrote poems and she read them out.”
Brigitte, whose son Sebastien is two years older than Emmanuel, and whose eldest daughter Laurence is the same age, ran the school theatre club where Emmanuel was a budding actor.
She said recently: “Little by little I was totally charmed by his intelligence. He wasn’t like the others.”
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When Macron turned 16, they confessed their love.
His parents, both doctors, disliked the relationship and sent him away to school in Paris.
But before he left, he told Brigitte: “Whatever you do, I will come back and I will marry you.”
They talked for hours over the phone and once Macron had turned 18 she divorced and moved to Paris to be with her student sweetheart.
She later said: “He vanquished my resistance. I told myself, ‘I’m going to miss out on my life if I don’t do this.’”
Macron got a masters degree in philosophy before graduating in 2001 from the École Nationale d’Administration, seen as a factory for the French elite.
He later joined investment bank Rothschild — where his biggest deal earned him £2.3million — and in 2007 he married Brigitte.
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The newly retired Mrs Macron is independently wealthy — heir to the Trogneux chocolatiers family of Amiens, famous for macaroons. Customers used to boast of “les macarons d’Amiens”. Now they joke about “Les Macrons”.
She has a villa in posh French seaside town Le Touquet — an hour’s drive from Calais. Her wedding to Macron took place there and he thanked his new stepchildren — now an engineer, cardiologist and lawyer.
He told guests: “If there is anyone who might not have found this simple, it would have been them.”
But barrister and mother-of-two Tiphaine, 33, who is his youngest stepdaughter, even started an election support group for him.
Macron was Minister of Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs under former French President Francois Hollande’s socialist government before quitting to run for office.
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He launched his own political movement En Marche! (Onwards!) last year and in its manifesto called his marriage “a love often clandestine, often hidden, misunderstood by many before imposing itself”.
Such is the interest in his love life that during a public appearance with Brigitte a reporter asked if he was “any good at politics”. She purred back: “I’m yet to find an area that he isn’t good at.”
Not everyone buys into their love story, though. Some critics have called her a “menopausal Barbie”, others dub him a “chouchou” — French for teacher’s pet.
Public fascination grew when he was accused of a secret gay affair with Radio France chief executive Mathieu Gallet, 40 — which he vehemently denies.
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Politically, Macron is a pro-EU, centre-left firebrand noted for anti-establishment rhetoric — and his wife has joked: “It can be hard to live with Joan of Arc 24/7.”
He has been compared to Tony Blair for being on the right of the socialist spectrum and is the new darling of French liberals appalled by Brexit and Donald Trump’s election.
He is now favourite for the presidency but that could be bad for Britain.
He wants to boost the eurozone by creating its own budget and finance minister, and to strengthen EU borders with a 5,000-strong force.
Among other policies, he would ban mobile phones in schools — but surely not close friendships with teachers.
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