Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel

She says of Billy, “We laughed like you couldn’t believe.” (Image: Getty)

Yet away from the stage, Billy’s addiction to alcohol was slowly ruining their marriage, and looking back, Christie wonders what could have been for them “if there wasn’t that issue”.

“I do think that we were probably really soulmates, it was an amazing time of my life,” Christie, 71, says of being married to the Piano Man from 1985 to 1994, with whom she shares daughter Alexa Ray.

“He was so sensitive and he did all the old-fashioned things, the flowers, the notes and the poems and the songs… How could I not fall in love with him?”

In her new memoir Uptown Girl – after the hit song he penned for her – the model reflects on meeting Billy in a dive bar in St Barts, where fellow model Elle Macpherson and an unknown Whitney Houston were also vying for his affections.

But after they tied the knot, the reality of life with a famous musician sunk in for Christie.

She recalls the dark times when Billy would disappear for days when he was drinking, including once during a Thanksgiving meal and another after Alexa’s fifth birthday party.

Another time, Christie recounts locking him out of their hotel suite in Hawaii after hearing he’d been pictured with an Aussie actress, before he returned “visibly and audibly drunk” and threw a chaise longue through the glass doors.
Christie says, “Billy continues to deny ever having had affairs, and I’ve always believed him.” (Credit: Getty)

ROLLERCOASTER LOVE

“To be clear, I never wanted to end things with Billy,” she writes.

“I read every self-help book I could find… we went to see a string of psychiatrists, psychologists… The drinking was bigger than the both of us. Booze was the other woman and it was beginning to seem that he preferred to be with her rather than me.”

It was a dinner with his bandmates at the couple’s East Hamptons home and Billy drunkenly accusing them of eating his meal that prompted Christie to ask for a divorce.

The musician went on to do two stints in rehab, in 2002 and 2005, but he didn’t completely give up drinking until years later.

In 2023, Billy told the LA Times, “I stopped [drinking] a couple of years ago. It wasn’t a big AA kick. I just got to a point where I’d had enough. I didn’t enjoy being completely inebriated, and it probably created more problems in my life than I needed.”

Despite their failed marriage, Christie still considers Billy one of her “two great loves”, the other being her first husband, Jean Francois Allaux.

“The hardest thing to include was criticism of Billy, because I do care about my friendship with him,” she says of writing her book.

“He said, ‘Just say what you need to say’. And I think that’s part of his healing, so I applaud him for all of that.”
Christie and Oliver Chandon de Brailles were only together for a short time. (Credit: Getty)

EX-BOYFRIEND’S TRAGIC DEATH

When Christie met Billy in the Caribbean, she was grieving the death of her boyfriend, Olivier Chandon de Brailles.

The model met the French heir to the Moet & Chandon fortune not long after her first marriage ended, but they were together only a short time until he died in a racing accident in 1983.
Christie alleged that Ricky Taubman owes her $3 million, which he denied. (Credit: Getty)

THIRD HUSBAND’S ‘MANIPULATION’

Amid her painful split from Billy in 1994, Christie survived a horrific helicopter crash in Colorado alongside Ricky Taubman, a real estate developer friend with whom she became “trauma bonded”.

Still “reeling from losing Billy”, she leaned on Ricky, with Christie alleging that Ricky owed the model $3 million dollars, which he denied.

“It was at its worst, emotional torture,” she says.

Adding even more heartbreak, Ricky walked out soon after Christie gave birth to their son, Jack, now 29.
Christie says her most tortured relationship was her marriage to Peter Cook. (Credit: Getty)

PETER’S AFFAIR WITH TEEN

“It was the most tortured relationship I’ve ever had,” Christie writes of her fourth marriage, to architect Peter Cook.

They had daughter Sailor, now 26, and he adopted her son Jack, but their union ended in scandal in 2006 when Christie found out he’d been having an affair with an 18-year-old girl, which he confessed to.

She writes about a man approaching her before an event, “Excuse me,” he said softly.

“I need to tell you that arrogant husband of yours has been having an affair with my teenage daughter.”