Personal life
Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz moved in with the popular French TV host Jacques Martin in 1983. They married on 10 August 1984. The wedding took place in Neuilly-sur-Seine at the town hall, and Nicolas Sarkozy, then the mayor of Neuilly, conducted the wedding. The Martins had two daughters, Judith Martin (b. 22 August 1984) and Jeanne-Marie Martin (b. 8 June 1987). She has two grandsons, Augustin and Louis as well as a granddaughter Diane Élisabeth, born of her daughter Jeanne-Marie.
In 1987, Sarkozy, who was married to his first wife at the time, met Cécilia Martin again and has said he felt "struck by lightning". Other sources, however, state that Sarkozy fell in love with the bride on her wedding day. Cécilia Martin left her husband to live with Sarkozy in 1988 and obtained a divorce three months later. Once Sarkozy had himself obtained a divorce in 1996, they married in Neuilly on 23 October 1996. The witnesses were Martin Bouygues and billionaire businessman Bernard Arnault. Six months later, on 23 April 1997, Cécilia Sarkozy gave birth to the couple's only child, Louis. Nicolas Sarkozy had two sons from his first marriage.
Nicolas Sarkozy once declared that Cécilia Sarkozy was his "strength and [his] Achilles' heel". Nicolas Sarkozy wrote in his 2005 book, Testimony, "Today, Cécilia and I are reunited for good, for real, doubtless for ever ... [W]e are not able and do not know how to separate from each other." He has said his wife is his "true soulmate" and "the person without whom nothing I do would be possible". In July 2007, he said, "At the end of day, my only real worry is Cécilia."
Rumors had circulated since Sarkozy's election as president in May 2007 that the couple had separated, and further rumors surfaced in the French media in October 2007 that they were soon expected to announce their plans to divorce. On 18 October 2007 the Élysée Palace released a statement declaring that the Sarkozys "announce their separation by mutual consent". Shortly afterwards, the palace corrected the separation announcement by stating that the Sarkozys had actually officially divorced.
On 19 October 2007, an interview with Cécilia Sarkozy was published on the front page of L'Est Républicain, a regional French newspaper. In it, she admitted that she had run away with her lover, Richard Attias, in 2005 ("I met someone, I fell in love, I left") and that though she eventually returned to Sarkozy, they were unable to repair their marriage. "What happened to me has happened to millions of people: one day you no longer have your place in the couple. The couple is no longer the essential thing of your life. It no longer functions; it no longer works."
She married Attias, Executive Chairman of The Experience, an events management company, on 23 March 2008, at Rockefeller Center in New York.
