Christie Brinkley Reveals Her First Impression of Billy Joel in New Memoir

Christie Brinkley has had a few high-profile relationships, but none compares to her time with Billy Joel. Despite being one of the most sought-after supermodels, Brinkley found she could be herself with him. Best of all, they could always make each other laugh.

“We laughed like you couldn’t believe,” she told People about their early days. “But also he was so sensitive and he did all the old-fashioned things, the flowers, the notes and the poems and the songs. He was going into the recording studio and he was writing all these songs and saying ‘This one’s for you.’ How could I not fall in love with him?”

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Billy Joel Looked ‘Sunburned to a Crisp’ When They First Met

In her upcoming autobiography, “Uptown Girl,” the Dancing with the Stars alum wrote in detail about meeting Joel in a dive bar and falling in love with him. “He definitely didn’t look like a rock star,” Brinkley wrote. “The man was sunburned to a crisp, his face the same color as cranberries and unctuous with oil, which he’d undoubtedly slathered on to soothe the burn, topped by what I like to call ‘the Long Island bubble:’ a carapace of curly shellacked hair popular in the 1980s in parts of suburban New York.”

She also couldn’t remember if his name was Billy Joel or Billy Joe, so she made a quick decision, which turned out to be wrong. “I decided to play it safe,” she writes. “You look like a ‘Joe’ to me,” she said.

Despite this slightly awkward start, the two hit it off. They sang together, talked, and laughed. Despite going home with others, they eventually reconnected and began dating.

“When I heard him sing on stage, I found myself undeniably attached to this physically hot and charismatic man,” she recounted.

Christie Brinkley Reflects on Her Divorce From Billy Joel: ‘I Never Wanted to End Things’

As their courtship continued, Joel and Brinkley were having the time of their lives together. “We called each other Bada Bing and Bada Boom,” she recalls. “Because we were really like teenagers falling in love. We were suddenly fumbling and stuttering and dropping things. Cooking dinner was never just … cooking. “We were the biggest, greatest Italians making Italian food. Si, Christie …. And then we’d start dancing.”

Two years after meeting, they married, had their daughter, Alexa Ray, and settled in the Hamptons. But cracks began to appear, in part because of Joel’s drinking. He would eventually quit drinking after going to rehab for substance and alcohol abuse, but that was still far in the future.

“To be clear,” she wrote, ”I never wanted to end things with Billy. But his drinking was bigger than the both of us.” The couple divorced, and Brinkley mourned the end of something that had once been so beautiful. “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.”

While they both went on to marry others, Brinkley is happy that she and Joel are now friends and have a “great” relationship. She doesn’t see him often, “but when he comes by to see Alexa, he’ll come in and say ‘hello,’” she said.

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