Tragic Details About Christie Brinkley's Messy Divorces

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Christie Brinkley may have stolen tons of hearts throughout her longstanding career, but the iconic supermodel's own heart has sadly been broken time and time again. In her April 2025 interview with The Times, Brinkley recalled how she met her first husband, Jean-François Allaux, when she was studying in Paris as an 18-year-old. The happy couple tied the knot in 1975, when Brinkley was only 20. However, she and Allaux ultimately went their separate ways in 1981 because the model's meteoric rise to fame gravely affected their marriage. "The more successful I became, the more I understood what I was missing by speeding home to keep him company," Brinkley acknowledged. 

However, in an April 2025 People interview, the Sports Illustrated star made it clear that she harbored no ill feelings for her first husband, even labeling him one of the "two great loves" of her life. The second was, of course, her second husband, Billy Joel. Brinkley's path first crossed with the legendary musician's at a St. Bart's dive bar in 1983, and she subsequently starred in the music video for his smash hit "Uptown Girl" shortly afterward. 

Brinkley and Joel walked down the aisle in 1985, and they welcomed their first and only child, Alexa Ray Joel, a few months later. However, their union wasn't built to last, and they signed off on their divorce papers in 1994. Unfortunately, the model's third marriage to Richard Taubman was even shorter, ending after about seven months. On the other hand, Brinkley's fourth and final marriage to Peter Cook lasted nearly a decade. Naturally, though, she was never the same after her divorces.

According to a 2001 Entertainment Weekly report, Christie Brinkley once gave a sad hint about why her marriage to Billy Joel ultimately fell apart. The Sports Illustrated star suggested that although the "Vienna" hitmaker was able to pour his heart out in his art, he couldn't be similarly open with her behind the scenes. However, she was a lot more forthcoming about the reason for the end of their 9-year marriage in her 2025 memoir, which was aptly titled "Uptown Girl."  

Brinkley shared that her second husband's excessive drinking took a serious toll on their relationship, reminiscing about how they got into a huge fight in 1990 after she asked him about the truth behind the rumors that he had cheated on her with an Australian actor, eventually asking the singer to leave their home as a result. However, an inebriated Joel returned later in the night and launched a chaise lounge into a glass door to try to get in.  

The breaking point came when the Grammy winner didn't come home following a New Year's Eve concert and a crew member confessed to Brinkley that he was cheating on her with a caterer for his show. The model still didn't want to part ways with Joel, even despite some of the glaring issues in their union, writing, "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."

In April 1994, a few months after Christie Brinkley's relationship with Billy Joel ended, she was involved in a near-fatal helicopter crash with Richard Taubman. In "Uptown Girl," the Broadway star detailed how they formed a deeply-rooted bond over the shared trauma of the life-altering incident. They then went on to have a whirlwind romance, holding their nuptials after just months of knowing each other, and Brinkley fell pregnant with their son Jack around the same time. 

However, just months after they walked down the aisle, Taubman revealed he'd reached out to Brinkley's allegedly abusive biological father, Herb Hudson, from whom she had been estranged since she was 8. Eventually, Taubman ended things with the model by informing her that he was following in her father's footsteps and abandoning his family. "In that second, the room collapsed around me, as Ricky's words hung in the air like dark, dirty soot, choking me with so much shock and outrage that I felt breathless," she recollected of her reaction. "Sometimes, history has a horrible way of repeating itself."

When the Sports Illustrated legend reflected on the short-lived marriage in an April 2025 People interview, she posited that the PTSD from the helicopter crash may have impaired her decision-making going into the relationship. Brinkley also disclosed that during the early days of her romance with Taubman, she was still holding out hope for Billy Joel to win her back, and she never gave herself the space to properly process those complex feelings.

In Christie Brinkley's memoir, she devastatingly described her third marriage to Peter Cook as "the most tortured relationship I've ever had." The supermodel explained how her world was irrevocably altered when she attended a high school graduation in 2006 to deliver a speech. There, a man approached her and informed her that the man she had been married to for nearly a decade was seeing his teenage daughter. "When your whole world falls apart and you realize in a heartbeat you've suddenly become the cliche middle-aged woman whose husband is having an affair with a much (much) younger woman, what do you do?" Brinkley wrote of her reaction to the shocking revelation. 

In fact, she even reckoned she may have fainted because of the overwhelming emotions she was processing in the moment. Additionally, the model knew in her gut that the story was true based on Cook's reaction to the stunned expression on her face. One day, Brinkley invited her friends over to do some research and get to the bottom of things. 

Although the ladies found "a panoply of incriminating photos and porn accounts" that confirmed their worst suspicions, they all still couldn't help but crack up as they watched all the photos print one after the other. Needless to say, Brinkley finally divorced Cook after learning the truth. In the following years, the Sports Illustrated star discovered that her estranged husband had enjoyed a months-long affair with his 18-year-old assistant and had given her $300,000 to keep the scandal out of the media.

After Christie Brinkley filed for divorce from Peter Cook, they entered into a bitter custody battle over their two children, Sailor Brinkley-Cook and Jack Cook, whom Peter adopted. The legal spat turned increasingly ugly during a July 2008 hearing when the supermodel's lawyers questioned how her ex-husband could demand custody of their teenage children while having an affair with a literal teenager. Meanwhile, Peter's attorneys questioned her character by pointing out that Christie had been married four times. 

According to Today, the architect's legal team also took issue with his ex-wife's motives publicly, saying, "Your honor, we're here because of the self-indulgent wrath of a woman scorned." Cook's lawyer continued, "What kind of a mother wants her husband flogged in public?" However, Christie asserted that she had protected her children's best interests by keeping them on a media lockdown amidst the trial. As People noted, when the author stated that she had no interest in reliving the trauma caused by Peter's actions, his lawyer wondered why the two years hadn't been enough for her to process her emotions. 

She replied, "It's been two years — a nightmare of pure torture. It hasn't stopped." Ultimately, though, the court awarded Christie custody of their two kids. In a statement shared on Facebook afterward, the supermodel wrote that although she had signed a prenup with Peter, it didn't hold much weight against his attacks on her character in court. She also confirmed that she was fighting to establish a no-contact rule with Peter in the last leg of her trial because she didn't want to deal with a narcissist like him anymore.

In December 2009, we learned of a tragic detail of Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel's daughter Alexa Ray Joel's life. One of the couple's former nannies disclosed to Page Six that then-8-year-old Alexa was gravely affected by her parents' divorce. "Alexa was withdrawing from her friends, and she was spending a lot of time alone in her room, but I felt like I was talking to a wall, because Christie didn't respond at all," they claimed. According to the former employee, the youngster was prone to fits of anger, possibly because her folks were constantly bickering. 

The nanny also criticized Christie for not being a strong enough presence in her daughter's life, apparently only wanting to step out with her when the paparazzi were around. Notably, the Sports Illustrated model's attorney previously stated that there was no credibility to the nanny's claims since she was a "disgruntled employee." It's worth noting that, as Alexa grew up, she remained close to both of her famous parents. Likewise, even Sailor Brinkley-Cook, Christie's daughter with Peter Cook, endured a rough patch after her parents' divorce. 

In a 2017 Instagram Story celebrating her close friend's birthday, Sailor described how they had initially bonded in a school counselling group for children whose parents had split up. The group, which was aptly called the banana splits, encouraged its members to make banana splits and discuss the positives of their parents' divorce, like the fact that they got to enjoy two of each holiday. Like her elder half-sister, Sailor also has a tight-knit bond with her parents. Ultimately, Christie's kids grew up to be gorgeous inside and out.