Denis Brogniart and his wife Hortense have been overcoming life’s trials and moments of joy together for nineteen years. They still love each other as on the first day, so no question of extinguishing the torch of one or the other irrevocably to sail towards new adventures. If for several years, the lovebirds no longer hide, this was not the case at the beginning of their relationship.
It all started in 2003. The presenter of Koh Lanta (since 2002) goes to LCI premises for a replacement in the sports department. It was then that he ran into Hortense, who was working there. And between them, the current immediately passed. “Basically, I am in the sports services of TF1 and I am asked to go and present the sports newspaper on LCI for a week in the morning. I go there and then there is a nice, very cute editor who catches my eye. We discuss and we talk about travel“, he remembered during an interview with Nikos Aliagas, for 50 Minutes Inside (TF1). Seeing their hooks but above all, his potential, Denis Brogniart made him an offer that she could not refuse. “I told him: ‘Either you stay in the LCI studios or you come with me to Panama.’ She preferred to come to Panama “, he told Thierry Ardisson in Hello earthlings (C8) in 2017.
Thus, Hortense applied to ALP and it hit the mark. Like the 54-year-old man who is also in command of Ninja warrior, she therefore flew to Panama, for the filming of Koh-Lanta: Bocas Del Toro, in order to be as close as possible to the candidates. But above all, she got very close to Denis Brogniart. “Our story begins there, around a good little local dish in a small restaurant lost in the middle of nowhere“, he had specified to Nikos Aliagas.
By mutual agreement, they had decided not to reveal their love directly. They therefore had to use stratagems to meet in secret. A situation not easy to manage. “The only person who knew that was my assistant. Hortense arrived as a journalist on Koh Lanta, so she wanted to live her own life and not just be labeled as the host’s chick. We have eased the pressure a bit over the last few days, but it’s true that we hid. It was not easy because you had to be cunning so as not to be exposed“, explained the presenter in SLT. But what had to happen, happened. Lovebirds ended up being unmasked towards the end of the shoot. And everyone was happy to learn of their divine romance.
The rest, everyone knows. Denis Brogniart and Hortense started their family. They had the joy of welcoming the twins Lili and Violette (born in 2005) and Blanche (born in 2006). “I will not be the animator that I am today without my family, and a fortiori without my wife“, added the one who is also the happy father of Dimitri (born in 2000 from a previous relationship) in 50 Minutes Inside. Their love was celebrated in 2007, during an intimate ceremony in the town of Yvelines where the father of the bride united them. Since then, Hortense has changed direction since she became a taxidermist and also does plumasserie. “Hortense does not have the soul of a groupie, she does not give a damn about television lights and notoriety“, confided Denis Brogniart to Parisian in 2016.