Christie Brinkley reveals why she ended marriage to Billy Joel: 'Booze was the other woman'

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In her new memoir Uptown Girl, Christie Brinkley opens up on her marriage to Billy Joel and the reasons for their divorce.

Brinkley, who was the inspiration behind Joel’s 1983 hit song Uptown Girl, tied the knot with the Piano Man in March 1985, and the pair welcomed daughter Alexa, now 39, that December. After nearly 10 years of marriage, Joel and Brinkley divorced in August 1994.

In the decades since their split, the two have remained close, but in her new autobiography, which recounts her career and four marriages, Brinkley, 71, reveals that Joel’s drinking led to their split.

“I did everything for our marriage, constantly working to make myself, our home, and everything around us into whatever he could possibly want or hope for. I continually told him how much I loved him, making sure he always felt adored and appreciated, because he was,” Brinkley writes, in an excerpt obtained by USA Today. “But his 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 with me.”

Their marriage was plagued by rumours that Joel, 75, had been unfaithful, but Brinkley maintains that she doesn’t think singer-songwriter cheated on her.

“To this day, Billy continues to deny ever having had affairs, and I’ve always believed him,” Brinkley writes, per PEOPLE. “But on that New Year’s Day in 1994, when he did finally straggle home, I asked him to leave.” 

Joel’s behaviour was, at times, troubling. In one passage, Brinkley recounts a scene in which Joel drunkenly ate pasta from a pot on the stove and then accused his family of eating his food.

“I hesitated to put that scene in the book,” Brinkley told the Los Angeles Times in an interview. “But at the same time, it demonstrates what I was up against.”

But despite his antics, Brinkley said she “loved him and I wanted to make it work.”

“Drinking is a disease. And I knew that there had to be some way to help him, and not always get to that point where this person who you love is suddenly a stranger to you,” she told the Times.

Brinkley said she “suffered through these incidents alone” because she was worried about the headlines his alcohol abuse would generate.

“I was 100% dedicated to Billy, but I never told anyone about our issues, not even my friends,” she said. “It was very difficult in that way, but we had a child together and I was trying to protect the family.”

Brinkley told the Today show that Joel gave her his blessing to write candidly about their marriage. “He said, ‘Just say what you need to say,'” Brinkley recalled. “And I think that’s part of his healing, so I applaud him for all of that. It takes a lot of courage.”

In an interview with Fox News, Brinkley admitted that it wasn’t easy to end her marriage to Joel.

“When you have a child involved, you may get those thoughts, but to walk away isn’t easy. And to walk away from Billy was not easy. So it took time, but at a certain point there’s one incident too many, and you just have to have a little self-preservation,” Brinkley said.

After their union ended, both Brinkley and Joel moved on. In 1994, Brinkley married to Richard Taubman after they both survived a helicopter crash in Colorado. They had a child together and divorced the next year. She was also married to Peter Cook from 1996 to 2008 and the pair share two children together.

Meanwhile, Joel married Katie Lee in 2004. After their split in 2009, he got hitched again to Alexis Roderick in 2015 and the twosome share two daughters.

In a 1986 interview with Rolling Stone, Joel recounted his first meeting with Brinkley in St. Barts. “I recognized her immediately,” he recalled. “She was more beautiful than she was in her pictures — (I thought), ‘Oh, wow, that’s Christie Brinkley. I wonder if she knows who I am.’ So I did what I call an album cover — I tried to look like me on an album cover. I gave it every angle I could. She didn’t recognize me from a hole in the wall.”

In her memoir, Brinkley says she hasn’t changed and in many ways is still the same person Joel met all those years ago.

“I’m still an uptown girl in many ways,” Brinkley writes. “I’m still the woman whom Billy first met at a dive bar in St. Barts, the one who likes sophistication, culture, and art, but who also likes to take risks, try new things, and shake her hair out on the back of a bike every once in a while.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com