Christie Brinkley recalls falling “hopelessly in love” with Billy Joel in her upcoming memoir, Uptown Girl.
While describing their first meeting at a St. Barts’ dive motel bar in 1983, Brinkley, 71, noted Joel, 75, “definitely didn’t look like a rock star” in People’s except of the book.
“The man was sunburned to a crisp, his face the same color as cranberries and unctuous with oil, which he’d undoubtedly slathered on to soothe the burn, topped by what I like to call ‘the Long Island bubble:’ a carapace of curly shellacked hair popular in the 1980s in parts of suburban New York,” she wrote.
Brinkley, who initially wasn’t sure whether his name was Billy Joel or Billy Joe, recalled the pair laughing “like you couldn’t believe” during their whirlwind romance.
Billy Joel and Ex-Wife Christie Brinkley’s Relationship Timeline
“But also he was so sensitive and he did all the old-fashioned things, the flowers, the notes and the poems and the songs,” she wrote. “He was going into the recording studio and he was writing all these songs and saying ‘This one’s for you.’ How could I not fall in love with him? When I heard him sing on stage, I found myself undeniably attached to this physically hot and charismatic man.”
Brinkley shared that she and Joel coined nicknames for each other — “Bada Bing” and “Bada Boom” — because they were “really like teenagers falling in love.” She added, “We were suddenly fumbling and stuttering and dropping things.”
Brinkley also recalled their elaborate meals, writing, “We were the biggest, greatest Italians making Italian food. Si, Christie …. And then we’d start dancing.”
The model and Joel tied the knot in 1985 and welcomed daughter Alexa later that year. After nearly a decade of marriage, Brinkley and Joel divorced in 1994.
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“To be clear, I never wanted to end things with Billy,” she wrote. “But his drinking was bigger than the both of us.”
Now, while reflecting on the end of their romance, Brinkley added, “In the end, when the relationship isn’t functioning the way you want it to be anymore — that’s the worst kind of loneliness because you just can’t make it work together and that’s painful.”
Brinkley — who went on to wed Richard Taubman in 1994 (calling it quits in 1995) and Peter Cook in 1996 — shared that she and Joel have remained friends through the years, calling their relationship “great.” (Brinkley is also mom to son Jack, whom she and Taubman welcomed in 1995 and daughter Sailor, whom she and Cook welcomed in 1998. Joel, for his part, is dad to daughters Della, 9, and Remy, 7, whom he shares with wife Alexis Roderick.)
”He lives mainly in Florida so we don’t see him as much as when he lived in Sag Harbor, but when he comes by to see Alexa, he’ll come in and say hello,” she noted.
When it comes to reading Joel new book, Brinkley shared, “Alexa described it to him and he’s like, ‘Sounds good, no problem.’”
Uptown Girl hits shelves on April 29.
