“Look at him as he struts,” Jacqueline quipped, telling us about her husband, Jacques.
"Do you think you are the King of England or what?"
»She asks him with a twisting phlegm.
Jacques smiles obediently in response: “We don't always agree, but we like each other.
"Good" and especially for a very long time.
At the residence of the Abbey of Saint-Maur-des-fossés (Val-de-Marne), an Ehpad where they are both residents - they still lived in full autonomy, in their house on the banks of the Loire, until at their 98 years old - the two people we have in front of us are without doubt the oldest married couple in France.
Born four days apart, Jacques and Jacqueline Bourel (in the civil registry, her name is Georgette, but refuses this first name…) have just celebrated their double centenary.
August 8 and 12, 1920 for the dates of birth.
"I'm the eldest after all," triumphs Jacques mockingly.
The event is extremely rare.
"Such a situation is so exceptional that I have never experienced it in 35 years of working with the elderly," says the director of the establishment, Pascal Champvert.
We have, of course, celebrated female centenarians, many, more rarely men, never a man and a woman as a couple.
"
Looking at them, one wonders if the secret of longevity in a couple is not these bickering which punctuates their speech.
"They both have a lot of character, often tease each other, but adore each other", seems to excuse Danièle, their only daughter, while we giggle behind our masks at each irresistible "punchline".
“He was flirting with anyone.
It fell on me… ”
Their history has lasted for 8 decades and started at the Salle des Pas Perdus, Saint-Lazare station (Paris 8th district).
“I was hanging out with a friend and let's face it, I was there to flirt, announces Jacques, straight off.
That day, she was also accompanied by a friend and was waiting for her train to the western suburbs where she lived.
Courbevoie precisely.
I was an electrical engineering student and lived in Paris, not far from the Place de la Nation.
They were then 20 years old.
Jacqueline held, until the birth of their daughter in 1949, a post of executive secretary in aviation.
Jacques and Jacqueline married in 1942, two years after meeting.LP / Jean-Baptiste Quentin
“He was flirting with anyone.
It fell on me… and it was not bad ”, jokes the one who would become his wife, two years later in 1942, in the middle of the war.
78 years of marriage on the clock!
"To imitate the seam of the stockings, it was he who drew me the pencil line on my legs", Jacqueline still confides.
A detail of intimacy that she poses there, as if to historically install the beginnings of their love story, with this trick of women under the Occupation to bypass restrictions and remain pretty.
They went through everything together like the exodus in the provinces, in Maine-et-Loire, at the time of the German advance.
“I was even taken hostage by the Germans in a local church.
Jacqueline always managed to come and see me, ”adds the centenarian.
"It's true that I was not afraid of anything," concedes the wife.
"You didn't bring me, I followed you!"
"
Return to the Paris region, where their apartment in La Garenne-Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine), close to strategic sites, was bombarded by the allies in their absence.
A move to Paris follows, boulevard de Charonne (20th century).
They are then in the front row at the Liberation.
Jacques speaks of it as if it had taken place yesterday, very moved.
“I will never forget the arrival of the Americans.
It was great, everyone was kissing… but telling it like that doesn't have a lot of salt anymore.
"We were like crazy," says Jacqueline.
If the spouses have witnessed many other historical moments, none exceed it.
Man on the Moon, for example?
“We were on vacation in Spain and I had taken a television on purpose to watch this incomparable event.
We were aware that we were witnessing something unusual, ”admits Jacques.
His job at the Electromechanical Company (which would become Alstom) made him travel a lot, from the 1950s, at a time when the plane was not yet a democratic means of transport.
The couple also meet many personalities such as the former president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
Jordan, Syria, Greece, Russia, Algeria… "I brought Jacqueline to several of these countries", specifies the husband before being cut off by his wife: "You did not
bring
me
, I followed you !
"
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If Jacques is the most talkative, Jacqueline's sentences are the most incisive, sprinkled with a fierce humor to die for.
The husband humbly recognizes that she is the funniest and deplores, for his part, an angry temperament.
But make no mistake: "I know how to defend myself", warns the centenarian.
"It's difficult a marriage," she concedes.
We sometimes take side roads, well ... especially him.
But I forgive him because he's smart.
I hate stupidity and forgive smart people.
"
We are moved by this admission which must have been a source of suffering.
A life, in short, with his knife blows in the contract.
"Knife blows you say?
Jacqueline comes alive.
Knife wounds yes!
Jacques raises his eyebrows, we giggle again.
"A couple of centenarians is extremely rare"
"This couple risks ending up in the Guinness World Records", advances Jean-Marie Robine, a demographer known to be the covalidator of the longevity of Jeanne Calment, who died at 122 years.
The centenarians and super-centenarians specialist confirms that the situation of Jacques and Jacqueline is "extremely rare".
As of January 1, according to INSEE, the centenarians numbered 21,860 (18,309 women against 3,551 men).
“It is already very rare that a centenarian has a sibling who is also a hundred years old.
However, this is explained, in part, by a common genetic heritage.
But a couple, that nothing genetically binds, come from different horizons, the probability is even less ”, explains the specialist.
“In all likelihood, you have every chance that they are the oldest married couple still living in France,” concedes Jean-Marie Robine.
Of the 800,000 children born each year, 8,000 will become 100 years old.
"This population will become more numerous and it is logical since the probabilities of survival do not cease increasing", adds the expert.
Better working conditions, access to healthier food, medical monitoring, the virtual disappearance of deaths in childbirth ... future centenarians will not have the same hardships.
Jean-Marie Robine warns, however: “This does not mean that they will live to 150 years.
That is yet another subject.
"