Billy Joel opened up about falling in love with his second wife, Christie Brinkley, in part two of the HBO documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes. The two met in 1983 while vacationing in St. Barts. Realizing they both lived in New York, they stayed in touch and had their first date at a Beach Boys concert.
“Here I am dating this beautiful supermodel… Me? I’m from Hicksville. What’s she doing with me?” said Joel, 76. “But it was a very productive time. I wrote a lot of songs for her. She was a muse. It felt like being a teenager again—rediscovering love.”
Brinkley described their early romance as “so much fun,” but noted things shifted in 1989 when Joel released I Go to Extremes. She said the song reflected his inner conflict between being a family man and a tortured artist, as he often drank and disappeared at night.
That same year, Joel sued his former manager for $90 million. To recover financially, he had to adjust his tour schedule, which distanced him further from Brinkley and their daughter, Alexa.
“I cared deeply about her, but I couldn’t be home,” Joel said. “Love feels permanent, but things eat away at it. Eventually, it all catches up. I was devastated.”
Brinkley recalled one of their last arguments: “He said, ‘Yeah, fine, go.’ I tried. I wanted it to work. I knew how lucky I was, with the music and all, but it just didn’t work.”
They divorced in 1994 after nine years of marriage. Joel later married twice more and is currently with Alexis Roderick, whom he married in 2015. They have two daughters: Della and Remy.
Brinkley, married four times, remains close to Joel. She named her memoir Uptown Girl, after the hit song he wrote for her. She told Page Six: “To be clear, I never wanted to end things with Billy. I read every self-help book I could find. We went to a string of therapists. We were probably really soulmates. It was an amazing time in my life.”