Why Christie Brinkley & Billy Joel's Divorce Was A Tragedy For Both Of Them

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The end of Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel's tumultuous nine-year marriage took a tremendous emotional toll on them. In an episode of the 2025 HBO Max documentary "Billy Joel: And So It Goes," the model shared that the "She's Always A Woman" hitmaker's fame turned their once fun-loving relationship into a distant one. Brinkley explained that touring took her then-husband away from her for extended periods, and joining him on the road didn't make much of a difference because he was generally too preoccupied with other things to spend time with her. 

As People noted, Joel admitted that his heart was breaking at the time because of his inability to be with his family. In addition to confessing that the split left him "devastated," the Grammy winner shared what he learned from it, saying, "I realized love is not concrete. You feel like it is, but there are things eating away at it. And in the end, it all catches up. It's hard. I was so devastated." 

In Brinkley's 2025 memoir "Uptown Girl," she shared another thing that made her failed marriage to Joel go from bad to worse: his drinking. She recalled several instances of the "Vienna" singer's heavy drinking that scared her, including a night in 1986 when she awoke to him not being in their bed and feared he had been abducted. However, after loads of searching, she discovered that he was drunk in a bar. Brinkley described her emotions from that night, writing, "I felt abandoned, which is a horrible feeling." Tragically, that feeling grew more prominent in the following years.

In her memoir, Brinkley described alcohol as "the other woman" in her marriage to Billy Joel because he would constantly pick it over her. The model insisted that she never wanted to walk away from their relationship, but she ultimately felt she had no choice. The model described the pain from the realization that their marriage was beyond saving, 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 an episode of "Billy Joel: And So It Goes," Brinkley recalled how gave up on their marriage during one of their final fights that revolved around Billy's drinking. The model warned him that she was going to New York with their daughter, Alexa Ray Joel, and Billy simply told her to carry on. Although Billy's drinking and hectic schedule may have been the two main contributing factors in their relationship's downfall, there were other significant issues at play, too. 

According to Entertainment Weekly, Brinkley once dropped a sad hint about why her marriage to Billy fell apart by confessing that he wasn't able to communicate directly with her, despite writing numerous songs about their relationship. In her memoir, the model also stated that she heard whispers that Billy had cheated on her, but she never believed them. Although the divorce became a tragic detail of Billy's life and hurt Brinkley terribly, they remain on good terms decades later.