From Student-Teacher Love Story To Face-Shoving Video: Macrons In Spotlight
French President Emmanuel Macron's wife, Brigitte Macron, is back in the spotlight after a video appeared to show her shoving his face away when they touched down for a visit to Vietnam.
The video has gone viral on social media, with many users construing it as a "slap".
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This is not the first time their relationship has made headlines.
They first met in 1993 at the Catholic Lycee La Providence in Amiens, where Brigitte, then 39, was a high school teacher and Emmanuel, 15, was her student.
Brigette, who was married to banker Andre-Louis Auziere and had three children with him, had her eldest daughter in the same class as Emmanuel.
According to a biography of France's first lady, Brigitte Macron: An Unfettered Woman by Maelle Brun, their family discovered their affair in the summer of 1994 after they saw them sunbathing together by the pool. Brigitte and Auziere were later divorced.
Emmanuel's ex-sports teacher Daniel Leleu said, "At 15, Macron had the maturity of a 25-year-old. He preferred to spend his time talking with the teachers rather than his classmates."
The relationship, though, did not sit well with everyone. Some sent anonymous letters to Brigette's family, which ran an old chocolate and macaron factory. Others went as far as spitting on her door, according to Ms Brun.
In her autobiography, Ms Brun wrote, "From one day to the next, her friends, with whom she was planning a vacation, refused to speak to her."
Later, Emmanuel left his hometown to complete his final year in politics and international affairs at a university in Paris. During an interview with Paris Match, Brigette revealed she thought their relationship would not last, for he might fall in love with someone his age, according to a report in The NY Post. She said, "My head was in a mess."
Despite being in a long-distance relationship, the two stayed in touch and kept seeing each other. The couple then got married in 2007, the same year Brigette's divorce was finalised, in the beach-front town of Le Touquet, where she married her first husband in 1974.
"There are times in your life when you need to make vital choices. Of course, we have breakfast together, me and my wrinkles and him with his youth, but it's like that," she told Elle France.
In 2014, Emmanuel became the finance minister and his wife quit her job to support him. The couple's relationship was also in turmoil during Emmanuel's presidential campaign. At the time, there were rumours that Emmanuel was secretly in a relationship with the head of Radio France, and that Brigitte was merely a cover for it, according to The NY Post. Emmanuel denied the rumours.
In her biography of Brigitte, Ms Brun mentioned that the First Lady of France was deeply hurt by the rumours and was going through a lot of emotional pain in her life.
On Monday, though, Macron was quick to dismiss all the rumours, saying, "My wife and I were merely fooling around but the moment was turned into some kind of planetary catastrophe. Everyone just needs to calm down."
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