What Really Took Christie Brinkley & Billy Joel's Failed Marriage From Bad To Worse

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Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel are one of Hollywood's celebrity couples who have aged gracefully — or, at least they did, before their relationship went up in flames after almost a decade of marriage. Both parties have moved on, though they are still connected through their daughter, Alexa Ray Joel, who is unrecognizable now. But what caused nearly 10 years of marriage to crumble? Brinkley shared in her memoir, "Uptown Girl," the final straw that made her decide she had to end the relationship.

"I never wanted to end things with Billy. But his drinking was bigger than the both of us," Brinkley wrote. Joel's substance abuse issues aren't news. He spoke about them candidly in an interview with Parade back in 2018, sharing how he went to rehab twice, once in 2002 and the next in 2005. His first stint was short-lived, only lasting a few days, but the second time. "I said, 'This time I'm going to stick it through for a month.' It was one of the best things I ever did," he confessed.

Years later, in 2023, Joel told The Los Angeles Times he was done with booze. "I just got to a point where I'd had enough. I didn't enjoy being completely inebriated, and it probably created more problems in my life than I needed." Clearly, his rocky marriage with Brinkley was one of those problems.

Though Christie Brinkley's marriage to Billy Joel ended back in 1994, it probably wouldn't have if the "Piano Man" singer hadn't struggled with alcohol abuse. "If there wasn't that issue ... ," she told Page Six. "I do think that we were probably really soulmates, it was an amazing time of my life." Brinkley goes on to reminisce about their nomadic way of life, traveling around the world and seeing it all.

Interestingly, Brinkley has been married four times, all of the relationships ending for different reasons. Her marriage to Joel was her second, and her marriage with her first husband, Jean-François Allaux, ended when the model's career took off in America and she decided she wasn't going to move back to France.

Brinkley's third marriage to Richard Taubman lasted less than a year and resulted in one son, Jack Paris Brinkley-Cook. The nail in the coffin of their relationship was when Taubman reached out to Brinkley's estranged father without her knowledge, then later referenced her dad's abandonment when he broke up with her after their son was born (via Page Six). Brinkley's fourth and final marriage to Peter Cook ended because he had cheated on her with his teenage assistant. Though their divorce was in 2008, they had welcomed a daughter, Sailor Brinkley-Cook, a decade before.