There is a saying, often bandied about in families, that the apple does not fall far from the tree. And certainly in the case of Tiphaine Auzière and her mother, France’s First Lady Brigitte Macron, the similarities are striking.
Intelligent and politically astute – Tiphaine has both campaigned for her stepfather Emmanuel Macron and stood for election herself – both are women who have carved their own paths in life.
No one would call Brigitte Macron, 73, a shrinking violet and the same could also be said of her youngest daughter, who at 42 is a seasoned lawyer and stalwart supporter of both her mother and stepfather, who is just six years her senior.
Physically, too, mother and daughter have the same blonde hair, youthful visage and slender build, along with that distinctive toothsome smile.
Just how alike they are, however, was thrown into sharp focus this week. History, it would seem, is repeating itself.
For as Brigitte is 24 years older than Emmanuel (he was a 15-year-old schoolboy when he met 40-year-old teacher Brigitte Trogneux and soon after they began dating), Tiphaine has tumbled headlong into a love affair with a kitesurfer 20 years her junior.
The identity of the young man following in presidential footsteps? Twenty-something Antoine Lecomte, who quite apart from being something of a high-flyer in the world of kitesurfing, studied at an elite business school and recently launched his own company manufacturing top-of-the-range kites for surfers from the desirable French seaside town of Le Touquet.
In Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, to give the fashionable resort its official name, Antoine, was – perhaps unsurprisingly – looking très content when the Daily Mail caught up with him this week after he returned to shore from an energetic five-hour training session on the water.
Tiphaine Auzière, 42, with her 22-year-old business student boyfriend Antoine Lecomte
He is also a surfing instructor and insists their relationship is not merely a summer fling
Wearing a full wetsuit, covered in sand and brandishing a sail, the 22-year-old grinned as he admitted: ‘I can appreciate why people are interested because our relationship is very similar to that of her mother, Brigitte, and President Macron.’
But it was only after checking in with Tiphaine that he agreed to chat further, stressing: ‘It’s not a summer fling. It’s love, it’s serious. We have plans for the future.
‘I know a lot of people in Le Touquet and they are all happy for us,’ he added.
‘They say if we are happy then they are happy. Age means nothing when you are in love.
‘Tiphaine may be 20 years older but she is fun, exciting and full of joie de vivre.’
There was most definitely a distinct joie de vivre about the couple’s decision to go public with their blossoming romance on Instagram earlier this week.
They each shared the same video compilation, captioned with Gallic insouciance by Antoine ‘48h in ’Dam with Madam’.
The series of clips show Antoine, who is originally from Lille but moved to Le Touquet after spending summer holidays there as a child, and Tiphaine in the Dutch city of Amsterdam where they spent a loved-up long weekend last month.
The opening image is of the attractive couple cheek to cheek in a shopping centre, before the reel rolls through road-trip images in his white VW Campervan. Tiphaine reclines on the bed while Antoine is at the wheel.
Then they are seen checking into the exclusive Faralda Hotel, which is built into a 50-metre-high dockside crane.
Rooms start at £900 for the night and the three suites – named Free Spirit, Secret and Mystique – are available to book by ‘request and invitation only’. There was more cosy footage of the couple strolling around Amsterdam, visiting galleries.
If the age gap has raised any eyebrows, it’s not fazing either mother-of-two Tiphaine, who separated from former partner, gastroenterologist and hepatologist Antoine Choteau in January 2025, or Antoine, who tells the Daily Mail he has had two previous relationships.
The dashing young businessman (he was out testing sails for his fledgling company, Mission Kiteboarding, when the Daily Mail spoke to him), admits he didn’t actually know who Tiphaine was when she came to him for efoil surfing lessons at the beginning of the summer.
The couple seem loved up in the videos posted by Brigitte Macron’s daughter
Her relationship is similar to that of her mother with French president Emmanuel Macron
An efoil is an electrically powered hydrofoil surfboard that allows the surfer to glide smoothly across the top of the water and Antoine is manager of Le Touquet’s efoil surf school, a business he oversees from a kiosk overlooking an estuary where Tiphaine posted a photograph of herself in a wetsuit, unzipped to reveal her back, in June this year.
‘La future James Bond girl,’ quipped one follower. If the striking Tiphaine is a Bond girl, then Antoine is certainly channelling James Bond in video footage from last summer that shows him, in a suit, riding his board across the water to a nearby restaurant, carrying a silver platter of seafood to a waiting diner.
On the subject of his new amour, Antoine says: ‘She came for some efoil lessons at the beginning of the summer, we got on and she came back a few times and then we met up at a party I was invited to.
‘But I had no idea she was Brigitte Macron’s daughter until later; it doesn’t bother me, we get on really well and that is the most important thing, we make each other happy.’
Antoine confessed he has been ‘reading all about us’ since news of the relationship went public at the start of the week but insisted that discovering Tiphaine’s background didn’t ‘change anything between us’.
He added: ‘Like I said it’s very serious, it’s not a summer relationship we have a lot of plans together. We are going to Asia in a few weeks on business.
‘She [Tiphaine] is a lawyer, and I have to develop my factory in Sri Lanka so she will help me, and we will go together. I’m hoping the business will get stronger.’
He sounds like a young man who knows what he wants, a trait that makes him more than a little like his new girlfriend’s stepfather.
Emmanuel Macron first met his wife in 1992 when he was a teenage pupil at the Providence Catholic school in Amiens, north of Paris, where she taught drama.She was a married mother-of-three and he was in the same class as her eldest daughter Laurence – who is now a cardiologist. The pair went on to rewrite a play together, which they later admitted was the period when they fell in love. At the time, Emmanuel was just 16.
In an interview with Paris Match, Brigitte confided: ‘I could feel I was falling, he was too…’ before adding: ‘At 17, Emmanuel told me, “Whatever you do, I will marry you!” Love took everything in its passage and led me to divorce. It was impossible to resist him.’
She acknowledged how difficult the situation must have been for her children, saying: ‘You can imagine what they were hearing. But I didn’t want to miss out on my life.’
She did not divorce her first husband until 2006, marrying her former student a year later, by which time he was a civil servant in his late twenties.
He asked his soon-to-be stepchildren for their permission.
The location of the wedding? Le Touquet, at the same town hall where Brigitte married her first husband, Andre-Louis Auziere. She was 54; her groom, 29. A videotape of Macron’s speech at their wedding reception shows him paying tribute to Tiphaine and her siblings, brother Sebastien and sister Laurence.
‘I want to thank you for accepting us and loving us as we are. Especially I want to thank Brigitte’s children,’ he said. ‘If there’s anyone for whom this would not have been simple, it’s them.’
Curiously, Brigitte’s children do not appear to have been troubled by the relationship, indeed Tiphaine has long spoken of her admiration for her mother and stepfather, who have long had a holiday home in Le Touquet (they recently sold one and are thought to have bought another).
‘If I have to give a vision of love, it’s Emmanuel and Mummy,’ said Tiphaine, speaking in a 2018 documentary. ‘When they are together, it is almost as if the world doesn’t exist.’
She returned to the subject of her mother’s second marriage in 2024, saying: ‘A family break-up can be both a heartbreak and an opportunity. Mixing families together can be enriching.
‘I have an adored mother and stepfather.’ She’s campaigned for her stepfather, who she once described as ‘exceptional, brilliant. He’s someone with a long-term vision of society.’
Tiphaine, who works in Paris but lives near to Le Touquet, has also been fiercely protective of her mother amid the numerous barbs and attacks thrown her way, about her age, her relationship with her husband and even preposterous claims that she was born a man.
‘I find it abhorrent in France in the 21st century such attacks [happen], which would not be carried out against a male politician or a male companion of a female politician. There’s a lot of jealousy,’ said Tiphaine after a volley of abuse in 2017.
She was also her mother’s staunch defender when online conspiracy theorists faced a French court last year, telling the court: ‘She’s not elected, she has not sought anything, and she is permanently subjected to these attacks. I – as a daughter, a woman and a mother – would not wish her life on anyone.’
Antoine is understood to have already met Tiphaine’s daughters Élise, 12, and Aurèle, ten, and a meeting with Brigitte is rumoured to be on the cards.
Meanwhile, their fledgling relationship has the blessing of Antoine’s parents too.
French president Emmanuel Macron and wife Brigitte Macron, who is 25 years older than him
‘My parents know. They haven’t met Tiphaine yet but they are happy. We expect a lot of attention now but Tiphaine is not my first girlfriend, I’ve had two relationships before,’ says Antoine.
‘People are not bothered about us and the age gap, they treat us normally but we laugh a lot together and we help each other, and enjoy time together, she is in Paris now but we will see each other soon.’
It is only when we venture to ask him what in particular he finds so attractive about his blonde-haired older lover that Antoine demurs.
With a gentlemanly flourish, he smiles. ‘Now you are asking too much, I cannot tell you everything about us but I will tell you we are happy and in love.
‘I cannot say anything else because she asked me not to say too much.’