Nathalie Marquay lost the man of her life on March 2. Difficult farewells on which she gradually accepts to confide. More than three months after the disappearance of Jean-Pierre Pernaut at the age of 71, his wife Nathalie Marquay maintains his memory by distilling small anecdotes about their love story. The latest dates back to Saturday, June 11.
Guest on the airwaves of RTL in the show The Grand Studiothe former Miss France lifted the veil behind the scenes of their first romantic dinner: “It’s very simple, when he invited me to the restaurant for the first time, it was at the Eiffel Tower. I knew he was the man of my life so I do not pass by four paths.“
When they met, Nathalie Marquay had just overcome leukemia. Desiring to start a family, she was afraid at the time that taking her time would ultimately prevent her from realizing her dream of becoming a mother. It is therefore in all frankness and without tweezers that she approached the subject with Jean-Pierre Pernaut at the beginning of their relationship: “I mustn’t waste time, I want to have children.“If such confidence can frighten many men, Jean-Pierre Pernaut did not flee, on the contrary.
Nathalie Marquay knew that a priori, she could go straight to the point with him: “As I am already of a certain age, we must not waste time. (…) If I was able to talk to him like that, it’s because I felt there was a spark between the two of us, and that I really had no time to lose. Neither did he, since he was already 51 years old. If he didn’t want to, we had to stop. Me, I was not there to play the cheerleader. I was there to be next to him and be his wife.”
The rest, we know. In 2002, a few months after their love at first sight at the Miss France election, Nathalie Marquay gave birth to their daughter Lou and then to Tom the following year. In June 2007, the couple crowns their love with a wedding and will have only one course of action, that of enjoying life and promising each other love and fidelity, until death separates them…