The public often tends to forget it, but before being Madame Sarkozy, Cécilia Attias was briefly married to Jacques Martin, in the 80s. The latter was 26 years old when she met the famous host – 24 years her senior – “by chance at the restaurant”. In her book A Desire for Truth, published in 2014, Cécilia Attias looks back on this era.
“I was 26 and didn't know much about life; so I fell under the spell of its culture and its ease”, she confides, specifying that she then traveled to the four corners of the world with Jacques Martin, from Vienna to Beirut via Los Angeles. Madly in love with the host at the time, Cécilia Attias evokes a man “breathtaking in knowledge and capable of devouring life to the fullest”.
“When he was wellwhat charm this man could display!”, she specifies in her book.
Jacques Martin “unlivable”? Cécilia Attias evokes the dark side of the host
Because yes, if Jacques Martin had an immense charisma that the public knew him well, he would have had a much darker side behind the scenes. Cécilia Attias confides that the host had a tortured side, “made of scratches and disappointments”. According to her, Jacques Martin was prey to eternal dissatisfaction which sometimes made him “
unlivable ” for his loved ones.
The host was clearly bored by the success “because it seemed easy to him”. “He would have wanted glory”, explains Cécilia Attias. Nothing was ever enough for Jacques Martin, according to his ex-wife, he who had “the feeling of having missed out on one's life and of not never lived up to it”. When he succeeded, it “weighed on him” and when he missed, it “worried him”says Cécilia Attias, who found this ambivalence good “complicated”.
Cécilia Attias: her marriage to Jacques Martin celebrated by her future husband
If she admits to having been “dazzled by seduction” at the beginning of their story, she adds that “the rest was less flamboyant”. The marriage of Cécilia Attias and Jacques Martin will not last. After saying “yes” in 1984, they had two daughters, Judith and Jeanne-Marie, before break up in 1988. In the process, Cécilia began a relationship with Nicolas Sarkozy, who had celebrated the latter's marriage four years earlier, as mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine.
