By virtue of their intimate partnership, first of all as husband and wife, but also as musical colleagues, Maurice Duruflé and Marie-Madeleine Chevalier came to be regarded as a single, complementary entity. He provided the music that became her career, and she was his foremost interpreter. The difference that each made to the other was incalculable, such that neither could have made as profound an impact alone, outside of their alliance. This is not to deny the virtues and gifts of each, but merely to assert that by their companionship they constituted a miracle of collaboration. It is impossible to imagine what Duruflé's influence as a composer would have been without his wife, the organist, who gave perfect expression to his compositions, or what Chevalier's career would have been without her privileged access to him, to his organ, and to his music. She taught his private organ pupils before they advanced to study with him. She spoke for him, and, it must be said, she protected him from the public and was a keeper of his secrets.

Jeanne Marie-Madeleine Chevalier was born on May 8, 1921, in Marseilles, on the Mediterranean coast. Her parents, Auguste-Marie Chevalier and Suzanne Chevalier-Rigoir, intended originally to name her Marie-Madeleine Jeanne, but because she was born on the feast of Jeanne d’Arc they decided to reverse the names to Jeanne Marie-Madeleine. She was, nevertheless, always known as Marie-Madeleine.

In 1927, when she was six years old, the Chevaliers, a devout Catholic family of amateur musicians, moved to the small town of Cavaillon, in Provence, where her maternal grandparents lived. Auguste and Suzanne raised their daughters Marie-Madeleine and Éliane in an artistic environment. Mr. Chevalier, in fact, was fond of Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony.

When she was six years old Marie-Madeleine began studying piano with her grandmother, Claire Rigoir. Mme Rigoir took note of her prodigy's “natural virtuosity, memory, perfect pitch, and her facility with sight-reading.” Her charge would play in minor keys pieces that were in the major, finding that “it is nicer this way.” She would cross hands, playing the bass part with the right hand, and the treble with the left.