Billy Joel ex Christie Brinkley reveals moment she knew she HAD to leave her 'soulmate’
28 April 2025, 11:50
The model “never wanted” to end things with the ‘Uptown Girl’ singer, but in the end had to make the decision to leave.
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Billy Joel’s ex-wife Christie Brinkley has opened up about the circumstances which led to her break-up with the ‘Piano Man’ singer.
In her new memoir, Uptown Girl – named after the Billy Joel song which she inspired – the iconic CoverGirl and Sports Illustrated model opened up about how it was Billy’s struggle with alcohol addiction which led her to end their marriage.
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“If there wasn’t that issue,” she told PageSix: “I do think that we were probably really soulmates, it was an amazing time of my life.”
But despite the fact the pair had “so much fun” exploring the world together after they wed in 1985, things got difficult as Billy’s drinking led him to reportedly disappear “for days” while the couple were together.
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In her memoir, Christie recalls feeling panicked after the singer disappeared for two days around the pair’s daughter Alexa Ray’s fifth birthday, leading the model to have nightmare “visions of his car wrapped around a tree".
Christie also reveals in her book how Billy once shattered glass patio doors by throwing a chaise longue at them while “visibly and audibly drunk” following a falling out the pair had while on holiday in Hawai’i.
Eventually, having had enough of the musician’s increasingly “delusional” drunk behaviour, Christie called for a divorce in 1994.
“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 and other medical doctors.”
But sadly, at the time: “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...
“He’s the father of my firstborn and we spent such great formative years together. And I’ll love him forever,” Christie told PageSix. “Things just reached a point where I knew I couldn't live with him.”
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Billy Joel has been open about his battle with alcoholism and visited rehab in the 90s and mid-00s to get help getting sober.
In 2023, he told the Los Angeles Times that he had stopped drinking completely “a couple of years ago".
The ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ artist gave his blessing for Christie to open up about the highs and lows of their relationship in her book.
“Billy said: ‘Go ahead and tell your story... the good, the bad, whatever you need to say,’” she told PageSix.
“When you’re in the throes of a drinking addiction, you don’t remember what you did... it’s brave of Billy to say to people around him, ‘You can speak freely, tell your story.’ And I think that’s part of his recovery,” she added.
