PARIS (AFP)---Cecilia Sarkozy, whose husband Nicolas was
elected Sunday as France’s new president, is a fiercely independent former model and PR executive unlikely to fit easily into the discreet role of first lady.

"I don’t see myself as a first lady. It bores me. I prefer going round in
combat trousers and cowboy boots. I don’t fit the mould," the elegant 49-year-old brunette has said.

Her arrival at the Elysee will certainly send in a blast of modernity after 12 years of the Chiracs, whose bourgeois respectability sat well with the Louis XV furniture of the 18th century palace.

Like the defeated Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, Cecilia and her
husband are in a relationship that flies in the face of presidential
convention but which in many ways reflects the changing sociology of France.

Of Jewish-Spanish ancestry, Cecilia’s foreign roots match those of Sarkozy, whose father is a Hungarian immigrant and his mother of Greek Jewish origin.

President-elect Nicolas Sarkozy, right, and his wife Cecilia, greet supporters on the Concorde square in Paris, Sunday May 6, 2007.

In 2004 she made a point of saying she did "not have a drop of French blood in my veins."

Cecilia was conspicuously absent from Sarkozy’s election campaign --
setting tongues wagging and reawakening memories of 2005 when the couple split for several months.

But she was conspicuously present for her husband's election victory speech to tens of thousands of cheering suppoerters on the Concorde square in Paris Sunday night.

As if to quell the gossip, she was photographed voting with Sarkozy and celebrating his victory in round one two weeks ago, but was again absent from his side when he voted in the decisive second round.

When Sarkozy entered government in 2002, Cecilia had an office in the interior ministry, but in early 2005 she disappeared from view and it was revealed she had left him for an advertising executive in New York.

A few months later they were reconciled.

In his autobiography, Sarkozy said the experience left him "profoundly
shaken. Even today I find it hard to talk about it."

He also tacitly admitted that he had pushed their relationship in the
media, saying he had "overly exposed her."

Communication adviser

Cecilia met Nicolas Sarkozy in 1984 when he officiated as mayor at her first wedding. According to a recent biography, he was infatuated by her on the spot and pursued her till their marriage 12 years later.

By then he had also been married and divorced. Together they had four children from their first marriages -- she two girls, he two boys -- and in 1997 they had a son of their own, Louis.

Despite her protestations about not fitting the mould of first lady, and despite the rumours of marital problems, family friends insist the couple are still together and that Cecilia intends to join him at the Elysee -- possibly acting as a communications adviser.

"They have had their problems but she is hugely important to him. She protects him," said one friend who asked not to be named.

"She will take on the role of first lady. A bit like Bernadette Chirac -- but a different Bernadette: one who knows what’s going on."