Christie Brinkley has opened up about the devastating moment that she was told her husband had been cheating on her with a teenage girl, while at a public event.
The 71-year-old is one of the most recognizable supermodels in the world, having fronted hundreds of magazine covers and posed in campaigns fro Chanel, Max Factor, Cover Girl and so many more.
She unpacked her career, and decades in the spotlight, in her new memoir, Uptown Girl, where she also spoke candidly about her love life, and her rollercoaster marriage to architect Peter Cook.
Their wedding was the fourth time that the fashion icon had walked down the aisle – following marriages to artist Jean-François Allaux, musician Billy Joel and real estate mogul Richard Taubman.
However, she branded their connection the ‘most tortured relationship’ that she had ever endured.
They tied the knot in the mid-90s but things took a turn when they attended an event together in 2006, alongside son Jack, where she was informed of her husband’s infidelity with an 18-year-old girl.
According to People Magazine, Christie recalled appearing at a local high school in the Hamptons where she gave a graduation speech for students when she was approached by someone she had never met before.
She wrote that he said ‘softly’, via the outlet: ‘“I need to tell you that arrogant husband of yours has been having an affair with my teenage daughter.”’
‘I was so stunned that I froze,’ she continued, before spotting Peter. ‘As soon as I saw him … Peter’s eyes were already trained on my face, as he began shaking his head, “No.”
‘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?’
‘In that moment, I thought I was going to pass out onstage, in front of hundreds of people,’ she penned, via the New York Post.
‘When I stood back up, I asked the man for his card, but he told me he didn’t have one and that he was a police officer in town, so all I had to do was to go into the station if I wanted the full story.’
Christie explained that her friends immediately rallied around her, offering her love and support, while urging her to look through the family computer to see if there was more information about the affair.
It was there that she uncovered ‘a panoply of incriminating photos and porn accounts populated the screen like fireworks, and before I knew it, my printer was shooting [beaver shots] out into the room’.
The pair had originally met in the late 70s but reconnected decades later by a mutual friend, and they tied the knot in September 1996, having announced their engagement the previous month.
They went on to welcome daughter Sailor together two years later – while Peter adopted Jack, who Christie had welcomed with Richard years before – but by 2006, Christie’s reps confirmed that they had gone their separate ways, with their divorce finalized in 2008.
Their separation resulted in a six-year court battle, with the mom-of-three describing the legal issues as ‘exhausting and scary’, after fearing that she could ever lose her children.
As well as close friends, she was inundated with messages from other women who were going through similar issues, something that made her realize that she wasn’t ‘alone’.
‘There were many times when I wondered if I would ever recover,’ she added, via People. ‘Whenever I felt this, I stopped, looked inward and counted my blessings, which was a long list that always started with Alexa Ray, Jack, and Sailor.’
Christie has since moved on, and briefly dated musician John Mellencamp for a year – but is currently thought to be single.
Speaking in an interview last year, she declared herself ‘open’ to a relationship, but conceded: ‘There just doesn’t seem to be anybody out there.’
‘At the same time,’ she added at the time. ‘I am pretty comfortable with my life the way it is, so, que será, será!
‘I always said my whole life that I think that you have to be happy alone so that you get with a man for the right reasons and you’re not clinging to him because you need to.’
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