Christie Brinkley has lived via sufficient for a minimum of two books.
The duvet lady and (and iconic Cowl Lady mannequin) survived a helicopter crash — and solely bought again on a chopper to hurry to her daughter’s aspect after a medical emergency. She married 4 instances and has endured heartbreak that left her “crushed.”
Out of all her exes, Brinkley, now 71, stays closest with second husband Billy Joel — and even named her new memoir “Uptown Lady” after the 1983 hit tune he famously wrote about her.
The couple had been married from 1985 to 1994, and share a daughter, singer Alexa Ray, 39. However, as Brinkley advised Web page Six, it was the Piano Man’s consuming that ruined their marriage.
“If there wasn’t that problem … ,” she mused. “I do suppose that we had been most likely actually soulmates, it was an incredible time of my life.
“I had a lot enjoyable. We had been such nomads, gypsies — simply between his job and mine, we had been seeing the world … it was great, actually great.”
However Brinkley writes that Joel would disappear for days whereas boozing. He even left Alexa Ray’s fifth celebration and went lacking for 2 days, prompting the mannequin to have “visions of his automotive wrapped round a tree” and creating “a panic I couldn’t shake.” (Joel did find yourself working his Mercedes right into a tree in 2003.)
The singer as soon as went lacking throughout their Thanksgiving meal. There was additionally the time Brinkley locked the singer out of the couple’s lodge suite in Hawaii after a buddy advised her there have been images of Joel out with an Australian actress.
He returned “visibly and audibly drunk” and, Brinkley writes, picked up a chaise longue and threw it via the patio doorways, shattering the glass.
The tipping level, she writes, got here when Joel hosted his band at their East Hamptons residence for a rehearsal — and drunkenly accused them of consuming his pasta, when he had eaten all of it himself.
“He was appearing delusional in a method I’d by no means seen earlier than,” Brinkley stated, revealing that she requested Joel for a divorce the following day.
“To be clear, I by no means needed to finish issues with Billy,” she stated. “I learn each self-help ebook I might discover … we went to see a string of psychiatrists, psychologists and different medical docs.”
However, she writes, “The consuming was greater than the each of us. Booze was the opposite lady and it was starting to appear that he most popular to be along with her relatively than me.”
Joel, now 75, went to rehab for the primary time in 1992 and bought sober, then returned to rehab in 2005 after relapsing.
In 2023, he advised the Los Angeles Occasions that he stopped consuming “a few years in the past.” He’s now married to fourth spouse Alexis Roderick, with whom he shares younger daughters Della Rose and Remy Anne.
“He’s the daddy of my firstborn and we spent such nice youth collectively. And I’ll love him without end,” Brinkley advised me. “Issues simply reached a degree the place I knew I couldn’t reside with him.”
She did communicate to him earlier than writing her ebook.
“Billy stated, ‘Go forward and inform your story… the nice, the dangerous, no matter you could say,’” Brinkley revealed. “Leaving Billy wasn’t simple for me to do — and it’s not simple to say something dangerous about any person that I maintain in such excessive regard … [although] I don’t suppose it’s dangerous.”
In reality, she desires her story to assist individuals coping with dependancy points.
“While you’re within the throes of a consuming dependancy, you don’t bear in mind what you probably did,” Brinkley defined. “You get up the following day and It’s the one who is relying on you who is aware of what occurred.”
“And it’s courageous of Billy to say to individuals round him, ‘You possibly can communicate freely, inform your story.’ And I believe that’s a part of his restoration.”
The elegant blonde, who grew up in Los Angeles, discovered fame after transferring to Paris age 18 when her past love cheated on her.
“Heartbreak propelled me and I believed. ‘I’ll present him, I’m off to Paris … California will not be sufficiently big for the 2 of us!’”
Quickly after arriving, she fell in love with artist Jean François Allaux they usually arrange residence in a tiny condo and not using a bathe, earlier than she bought found as a mannequin. The couple wed in 1975 and divorced in 1981.
Brinkley was then left devastated by the demise of boyfriend Olivier Chandon de Brailles, the 27-year-old inheritor to Moët & Chandon champagne fortune, in a racing accident in 1983.
She met Joel at a dive bar in St. Barts later that very same yr.
Whereas within the midst of her 1994 breakup with Joel, Brinkley took a visit to Telluride with Alexa Ray and was invited to go heli-skiing by her host, real-estate developer Rick Taubman. Becoming a member of her within the helicopter had been Sandra Carradine, the ex-wife of actor Keith Carradine, and her son Cade.
The mannequin describes within the ebook how the helicopter “simply fell from the sky,” plunging into freefall from 300 ft — and when it crashed, her ski boot bought caught within the wreckage, dragging her down the mountain towards a sheer granite cliff. Miraculously, the chopper was stopped by a wall of snow. Later, it was reported the crash was brought about primarily by the helicopter taking a pointy flip at 12,800 ft.
Brinkley advised me she had sprinkled “magic grime” from Chimayo, New Mexico, within the helicopter earlier than takeoff. In a while, rescuers discovered her attraction full of the grime among the many wreckage.
The mannequin stated she nonetheless has PTSD, including: “If any person says ‘actually inform me the story’ and I get into it, I all the time find yourself crying, as a result of.the truth that any of us lived via that’s such a miracle. And every day is such a present.” (She solely bought again on a helicopter, she advised me, when Alexa Ray fainted whereas at school at NYU and hit her head, prompting Brinkley to race to Manhattan from her Hamptons residence.)
Although they had been break up up, Joel got here to be along with her after the ’94 crash. On the airplane residence, she was drifting out and in of sleep, when she heard him say on the telephone, “No, don’t fear, I’m not going again to her, I simply have to see her via this.”
Brinkley writes: “And identical to that dream broke aside like particles. I knew then that our separation was actual and that whereas I had needed to consider he couldn’t reside with out me, apparently he might. And I used to be going to should be taught to reside with out him.”
Lower than two weeks later, they introduced their break up to the press, and Brinkley fell into the arms of Taubman. She married him that December — “I believed I had discovered my kindred spirit ultimately.”
Within the ebook, she alleges that as quickly as they bought engaged, Taubman requested her for $75,000 — and by the tip of their seven-month marriage, he had “borrowed” $2 million she would by no means see once more. Taubman additionally relinquished parental rights to their son Jack, now 29, whose godfather is Joel.
The mannequin says of her third marriage: “It was user-ship, manipulation at its worst, emotional torture.”
Then got here marriage quantity 4, to architect Peter Prepare dinner, with whom she had daughter Sailor, now 26. They wed in 1996 and had been collectively for a decade. However after Brinkley gave a graduation tackle at Southampton Excessive Faculty in 2006, a person got here as much as her and alleged Prepare dinner had been having an affair together with his 18-year-old daughter.
There adopted a messy, very public six-year divorce and custody battle. Having paid for all the things of their relationship, Brinkley alleged, she realized that Prepare dinner’s nickname for her was “the money cow.”
Even her divorce lawyer, Bob Cohen, advised her she had dangerous style in husbands. However, Brinkley stated, “I believe two of the 4 ain’t dangerous!
“It wasn’t how I anticipated it to be, however I got here out of it with these superb children.”
Requested if she would ever marry once more, Brinkley, who lives within the Hamptons, stated, “By no means say by no means … I imply, [dates are] very a lot fewer and much between these days. And I’m very, very content material and blissful doing my very own factor, which I believe can also be obligatory earlier than you’ve got one other relationship. However, you understand we’ll see, you by no means know.”
She would like to be a grandma, she admits.
Alexa Ray is engaged to restaurateur Ryan Gleason and, in a single emotional passage within the ebook, Brinkley particulars how her eldest took an inadvertent overdose of the homeopathic ache drugs Traummel following a breakup from her first boyfriend in December 2009.
“When dangerous issues occur, you all the time attempt to put them in perspective. However when it’s your children, there’s no approach to put it in perspective,” Brinkley stated.
“However Alexa was there after I was doing that a part of the ebook and he or she had her enter. And I believe she welcomed that as a result of it was portrayed [in the press] a bit otherwise than what it really was — which was a younger lady kind of sinking in her despair from her first actually, actually large heartbreak that had been very encompassing … and he or she didn’t cope with it in one of the simplest ways.
“And it scared Billy and me … We had been like, growth, you understand, heading into that hospital so quick. However she got here out of it and he or she’s continued talking to younger ladies about heartbreak.”
A singer herself, Alexa Ray has appeared onstage along with her dad many instances. Sailor is a mannequin, whereas Jack has dabbled in appearing. However Brinkley tells her children: “Don’t let anyone nepo child you!”
And Brinkley — who doesn’t look her age — continues to be modeling, runs her trend line TWRHLL, and has her personal wine, Bellissima.
“I believe there’s some folks that reside their life like they’re afraid that one thing dangerous is gonna occur. However [it’s all] really a part of the journey,” she stated.
“And that’s to not say there haven’t been instances the place I’ve been, like, crushed. [But] you decide your self up, you typically be taught a lesson, and it propels you ahead. Typically it takes some time, however looking back … I spotted how nice it’s to make errors.”
