Christie Brinkley reflected on her tumultuous marriage to Peter Cook — calling it the “one of the most tormented experiences I’ve ever had” — in her Uptown Girl memoir.
When meeting Cook (for the second time, since the first wasn’t too memorable) in 1996, Brinkley didn’t think he was her “type.” However, she agreed to go on a date with him.
“Things happened quickly after that, and for a number of reasons,” Brinkley wrote in the book, which was released on Tuesday, April 29. By September 1996, they were married.
Cook swooped into her life following her 1995 divorce from Richard Taubman. Brinkley wrote that she felt a “sense of urgency” to find her son a father figure. (At the time she was a mother to Alexa Jay Joel, whom she shared with ex-husband Billy Joel and Jack Brinkley Cook, whom she shared with Taubman.)
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Cook eventually adopted Jack and the then-couple welcomed daughter Sailor Brinkley Cook in 1998. Brinkley announced her plans to split from Cook in 2006 after a major incident — but more on that in a second. Their divorce was finalized in 2008.
“Years later, in 2012, after a tumultuous six-year divorce and custody battle with Peter, he called me a liar on national television,” Brinkley wrote. “I never defended myself, and while I’m not interested in talking about him now, I do want to share a little story.”
Brinkley recalled giving a commencement address at Southampton High School. During the graduation, “a man who wasn’t part of the ceremony” tapped her on the shoulder and alleged his 18-year-old daughter and Cook were having an affair.
“I knew from Peter’s face that he was guilty, and in that moment, I thought I was going to pass out onstage, in front of hundreds of people,” she recalled. “When I stood back up, I asked the man for his card, but he told me he didn’t have one and that he was a police officer in town, so all I had to do was to go into the station if I wanted the full story.”
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Brinkley got the full story, and sent Cook out of the house. Their divorce and subsequent custody battle took six years to end — with Brinkley getting full custody of Jack and Sailor. (Cook addressed the affair allegations, and admitted to it, during a 2008 interview with ABC News.)
“I never talked about Peter in the media, except for one time, on the Today Show,” Binkley wrote, noting that she was “ambushed” while promoting a different project “even though I had been unequivocal that I wasn’t interested in airing dirty laundry — and I’m still not.”
