Christie Brinkley says she knew she had to leave Billy Joel after ‘delusional’ behaviour

Model Christie Brinkley has opened up about her marriage to musician Billy Joel, and the behaviour that led to her asking for a divorce.

Brinkley and the “Piano Man” star were married in 1985 and had one child, daughter Alexa Ray Joel, before divorcing in 1994.

They met at a dive bar in St Bart’s while Brinkley was reeling from the death of her boyfriend, Olivier Chandon de Brailles – the 27-year-old heir to the Moët & Chandon champagne fortune – in a racing accident in 1983.

Now 71, Brinkley has been married four times but remains closest to Joel and has named her new memoir, “Uptdown Girl”, after the hit 1983 song inspired in part by her.

In an interview with Page Six, Brinkley, known for her hundreds of magazine covers including for Vogue and Sports Illustrated, said it was Joel’s drinking problem that ultimately resulted in their relationship ending.

“If there wasn’t that issue … ,” she said. “I do think that we were probably really soulmates, it was an amazing time of my life.

“I had so much fun. We were such nomads, gypsies — just between his job and mine, we were seeing the world … It was wonderful, really wonderful.”

In the book, Brinkley apparently wrote that Joel would disappear for days while in the middle of a drinking binge, on one occasion going missing for two days after leaving Alex’s fifth birthday party.

Brinkley said that this caused her to develop a “panic I couldn’t shake”, fearing that he’d got into a car accident.

The tipping point, she said, was when Joel drunkenly accused his band – who he was hosting at their east Hamptons home for a rehearsal – of eating his pasta, when in fact he had eaten it himself.

“He was acting delusional in a way I’d never seen before,” Brinkley said, confirming that she asked Joel for a divorce the next day.

“To be clear, I never wanted to end things with Billy,” she said. “I read every self-help book I could find … we went to see a string of psychiatrists, psychologists and other medical doctors.”

She continued: “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.”

Joel went to rehab for the first time in 1992, returning in 2005 after suffering a relapse. In 2023, he told the Los Angeles Times that he had stopped drinking “a couple of years ago”.

Brinkley told Page Six that she spoke with Joel before writing the book: “Billy said, ‘Go ahead and tell your story… the good, the bad, whatever you need to say.’”

Joel is now married to his fourth wife, Alexis Roderick, with whom he shares his two daughters Della Rose and Remy Anne.

“He’s the father of my firstborn and we spent such great formative years together. And I’ll love him forever,” Brinkley said. “Things just reached a point where I knew I couldn’t live with him.”

Asked if she would ever marry again, Brinkley, who lives in the Hamptons, said, “Never say never … I mean, [dates are] very much fewer and far between nowadays. And I’m very, very content and happy doing my own thing, which I think is also necessary before you have another relationship. But, you know we’ll see, you never know.”

Brinkley shared a poignant reflection with her fans last year as she celebrated turning 70, writing that she was “finally happy with the person looking back at me”.

Uptown Girl is released on 29 April.