Sébastien & Diouldé: 30 years of marriage since meeting in the lecture halls of EDHEC

Sébastien and Diouldé, both graduates of the 1989 Masters programme, celebrated their pearl wedding anniversary (30 years) in January 2025. To mark this year’s Valentine’s Day, they agreed to take part in a joint interview, each answering our questions. 

A look back at a wonderful EDHEC love story!

When you arrived at EDHEC, did you think you would meet the man/woman of your life?

Sébastien: Not really, but I wouldn’t have said no to finding a girlfriend. 😊
Diouldé: I wasn’t even thinking about it!

When did you see Diouldé/Sébastien for the first time?

Diouldé: I think it was on the premises of the Prix de Court association at the beginning of our first year, but actually I had already heard of him a few days earlier at the start of the academic year.

Sébastien: Ah, it was at the ESSEC entrance exam at Stanislas in Paris. She handed her maths paper in after an hour, she was wearing a spring skirt and her wooden heels were tapping on the floor.

Note added by Diouldé: Ha ha, I can confirm that at the ESSEC exam I handed my paper in after an hour, but don’t go thinking I’m some kind of maths genius: I only understood the first half of the problem and ended up getting 0.5/20. I went to the cinema for the remaining 3 hours, no doubt some kind of premonition of my future involvement with Prix de Court!

What's your best memory from EDHEC?

Sébastien:  I have lots of them, but I would say the best is when we attended the Prix de Court festival together and the selection of short films! And that memorable journey in a van to the short film festival in Clermont-Ferrand.

Diouldé: My first trip to Rome hitchhiking with the crew from Prix de Court. It was an incredible experience, and when I got back I started going out with Sébastien. I can still see us on the steps of Piazza di Spagna, shouting "auguri, buon anno!" on the night of 31 December.

What would you say is Diouldé/Sébastien’s best memory from EDHEC?

Sébastien:  One jumps to mind right away. It's quite an intimate one, of us sitting peacefully in front of the fireplace in our student apartment telling each other about our lives. And then there was the “disintegration” event, when I was King Louie from The Jungle Book and Diouldé was fanning me with palm leaves. A scene that was quite … unique (and not very woke!).

Diouldé: The same as mine perhaps? The one from Piazza di Spagna…

After 30 years of marriage, what would you say is the secret to a lasting relationship?

Diouldé: Recipe no. 1: make each other laugh!

Sébastien: Argue from time to time, never let things go unsaid. You also need to laugh – often.

If you could travel back in time and relive a moment from your student life together, which one would you choose?

Sébastien: That magical moment when we met in the EDHEC foyer and I spoke to her about Prix de Court, which marked the beginning of our collaboration.

Diouldé: Preparing for the 4^th Prix de Court festival during our second year at EDHEC, with the whole gang of friends who I’m still close to today. And in particular the film selection sessions at the Court Métrage agency in Paris, where we would often go together, Seb and I, with the big hall all to ourselves, it was quite unique.

What do you tell your children about your EDHEC years?

Sébastien: We tell them that we really had a laugh, that Prix de Court was a fantastic adventure, that Diouldé had the right idea trading her German assignments (which she aced) for finance assignments – it must be said that no-one was very good at German! That she managed to squeeze an extra few points on her taxation grade by playing the pity card with the teacher. That after the Banking Law classes with Mr Wattiez, we were all paranoid filling out our cheques. That Diouldé’s driving was … sporty (i.e. insane) to say the least on the trips between Paris and Lille, until the birth of her children encouraged her to take her foot off the gas. That my revision sheets were so minuscule that on the day of the exam (where revision sheets were allowed 😊), I was incapable of reading them.

We still tell anecdotes about our friends from EDHEC – stories our children know off by heart!

Diouldé: We tell them that we didn’t work too hard but boy did we laugh! There were five of us sharing a large apartment that we nicknamed “Le Lifting” because when the landlord was showing us around he meant to refer to it as a “loft” but instead called it a “lifting”! It was freezing in winter – non-existent insulation, heating stuck on 12°C to avoid maxing out our budget – but that didn't stop us hosting magnificent parties there.

And then there were our professors: Christophe Roquilly, who had just arrived, with his rock n roll look. And Olivier Oger, also new to EDHEC and who stayed for 30 years!

I talk to them about EDHEC as it was back then, much smaller. Smaller than my suburban secondary school! With just 560 students, a foyer no bigger than 50m² right in the heart of Lille city centre, soft seats that were a bit manky and a coffee machine ... Nothing like the superb XXL and ultra-modern campus they have now.