Claudia Sheinbaum and Jesús María Tarriba, the couple who reunited after 30 years and got married shortly before she won the Mexican elections

They met in a laboratory at the Faculty of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and, after the second time they met, they became lovers.

But their paths separated after almost a year and a half of relationship and They lost contact for more than three decades.

Tarriba specialized in economic calculations and left Mexico to occupy various positions in multinational financial institutions.

Sheinbaum, for her part, continued her life in academic research and then focused on politics, which led her to be the Secretary of the Environment of Mexico City, a party leader, mayor and Head of Government of the Mexican capital.

During that period, she married and raised two children with a first husband whom she divorced in 2016, after almost 30 years of marriage.

Tarriba also formed her own marriage, had a daughter and divorced last decade.

An innocent friend request on Facebook led to the reunion.

Faced with the great public exposure that his new wife has had in recent years, Tarriba chose to maintain a discreet role. He accompanied her to some celebrations and important moments of her campaign, but he is not known for making statements or appearing before the media.

“He has many qualities. He is a very intelligent and very calm man.” says Sheinbaum of her husband, who at home helps her forget about the intensity of public life.

Tarriba was born on September 1, 1962 in the state of Sinaloa, in northwestern Mexico.

At the age of 15 he moved to Mexico City to study high school at a private school. He then entered UNAM, the most important public university in the country, in whose classrooms he met Sheinbaum, who was already known as a young activist of student movements.

“I [te conocí] first to you, than you to me, because you were always in the assemblies. “You were a public figure,” explains Tarriba in a video in which the couple tells how they started their relationship.

In those years, Sheinbaum was among the leaders of the University Student Council (CEU) which had among its main causes that higher education be maintained free of charge.

Although they were from different courses, Tarriba and Sheinbaum shared common spaces, such as the laboratories of the Faculty of Sciences.

And at student meetings they began to “click” and began a relationship. The couple says that he invited her to modern dance classes, which Sheinbaum found attractive and easy because she had practiced ballet since she was a child.

They became boyfriends and had a relationship of almost a year and a half. Today Tarriba recognizes that at that time he “neglected” the relationship and they separated. And they both took different paths.

Sheinbaum married another CEU leader, Carlos Imaz, in 1987, and they started a family with Rodrigo, his son from his first marriage, and Mariana, their common daughter born a few years later.

Tarriba left Mexico to do a postgraduate stay at the University of California in Irvine, which helped him refine his doctorate in Physics.

His academic work, “Optical and magnetic response of systems with interfaces”, earned him the Weizmann Prize for Exact Sciences for the best doctoral thesisa recognition granted by the Mexican Academy of Sciences.

But his professional life did not continue focused on Physics, but rather calculus..

“In a self-taught way I studied financial mathematics“, says Tarriba.

After obtaining his doctorate, he got his first job in the private sector as an analyst at the Banamex financial group.

From there, his professional career went through several positions related to creation and analysis of market risk models. She was in offices of the Spanish bank Santander in New York and Madrid. That kept him out of Mexico for almost 20 years.

And perhaps he would still be out if it weren’t for the reappearance of Sheinbaum in his life.

Upon his return to Mexico, he joined the team of analysts at Bank of Mexico, the country’s central bank. Since then he has carried out “development of valuation models and measurement of financial risks.”

The reunion with Sheinbaum was key for him to return to the country, both say.

When Sheinbaum was mayor of Tlalpan, one of the political districts of the Mexican capital, one afternoon in 2016 she was looking at Facebookaccording to what the politician has said in various interviews.

Between the friends suggestions she saw Jesús María Tarriba, her old boyfriend from university. She sent him a request and they both started chatting through the chat.

“You asked me for an invitation, and I responded with a boast,” Tarriba jokes.

“It just so happened that he had gotten divorced, I had gotten divorced. He had stopped working in Spain and I was in the Tlalpan delegation and he came to visit and we met again,” she told W Radio station.

After some reunion trips between Mexico and Spain, they assure that They decided to resume the romantic relationship started 30 years earlier.

“In some way you are still the same person in many things. The moment you write to each other you realize that there are many things in common,” he told journalist Hernán Gómez when reflecting on how unlikely these types of reunions are.

Tarriba has remained out of the public scene since his return to Mexico. He was once seen at the Independence celebrations accompanying Sheinbaum at the National Palace. And in other key events of her campaign for the presidency.

But your low profileSheinbaum assures, has been key for her to cope with the intensity of political activity.

“He has many qualities. He is a very intelligent man and he is very calm. He lives happily reading, it is his passion. So there is no demand for time, of ‘what time are you arriving? What time are you leaving?’ We really enjoy the times we have together,” he explains.

He also emphasizes that looking for the balance between public and private life It has been key to their relationship.

Have “patience and love,” as well as “avoid toxic zones, the sense of dominance,” he explains. “We fought and forgave each other after 5 minutes,” she adds.

“She is a very intense woman, very interesting, very empathetic with people. Since university I admired her stamina, her energy, when she was involved in a thousand things. And to this day she is a little like that. And she is very affectionate, we understand each other very good”.

A communication and understanding that will be essential to adapt to his role as first gentleman and get used to seeing his youthful love a few hours a day.