Juntil now, the roles were well defined: politics and the spotlight were his, hers was a discreet life, sheltered from cameras and rumors. But with the appointment of François Bayrou as Prime Minister this Friday, November 13, Élisabeth Perlant, his wife since 1971, sees their life together take a new turn.
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François Bayrou and Élisabeth Perlant met at university. “What I remember, first of all, were her legs, straight, beautiful fine ties. Then his face. I said to myself: “This girl, she is for me”,” explained the president of MoDem in 2012, in the biography Bayrou the stubborn by Rodolphe Geisler. They married five months later, aged just 20, and both became professors of literature. The Bayrou family, which today has 6 children and 21 grandchildren, has grown over the decades.
“Babeth” Bayrou “hates worldliness”
During all these years, Élisabeth Perlant stayed away from political life. “She often sees the political world as light and lacking in depth. She thinks it too often resembles the playground,” confided to Gala in 2012 the one who was then a candidate for the presidential election. “We made this choice thirty years ago. It’s a way for her to protect herself, but not only that. She would have hated being the “wife of” and would not have tolerated the superficiality of this world. We see life in the same way, with a lot of humor but also seriousness when things deserve it,” he said at the time.
It was only in 2001, after thirty years of marriage, that his wife appeared publicly in the company of the politician, on the stage of the Amiens UDF convention, which then endorsed the candidacy of François Bayrou in the 2002 presidential election.
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Subsequently, the former teacher appears several times with her husband, such as in 2014, when François Bayrou won the town hall of Pau (he will be re-elected in 2020). However, she always keeps her distance: “She hates social life. Since her husband is deputy for Pau, […] Babeth has always, with the same constancy, refused to go to a dinner of notables in town,” she is described in Bayrou the stubborn.
“The fact that I had to live half the week 850 kilometers from home was not a handicap. Without that, she might not have put up with me for long,” laughed the man who divided his time between his property in Bordères (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), where he was born, and his political occupations in Pau or Paris. . The one for whom it is explained that she appreciates being “given a little leeway” will she acclimatize to the new life of her, now, Prime Minister?
