Christie Brinkley opened up about her turbulent love life in a new memoir and a source exclusively tells Closer it’s served as a liberating and cathartic experience to finally tell her truth and let go of the angst and resentment that she’s carried around for many years.
“Her book has been very well received by not only fans but also the people in her life. She had no pushback from Billy, they are still great friends, so of course she let him read it in advance,” the source says about Christie’s ex-husband Billy Joel.
“He gave her the go-ahead to tell her story, it’s water under the bridge for him and he’s man enough to admit to the ways he messed up. Christie was very fair to him and to everyone she writes about,” the insider continues.
Christie, 71, and Billy, 76, married in March 1985 and divorced in August 1994. The duo share daughter Alexa Ray Joel, 39.
The memoir also reflects on the supermodel’s fourth marriage to architect Peter Cook. The pair wed in September 1996 and divorced in October 2008 after Christie learned he was allegedly having an affair with an 18-year-old woman.
“Her mantra through the writing process was that she wanted total honesty. She didn’t sugarcoat anything, so it was quite scary to put it all out there, but also very cathartic. It’s all out in the open now, including her feelings about Peter and how truly terribly he treated her,” the source explains.
“That moment, where she found out he was cheating with a girl in high school while giving a speech at the school, will be forever burned in her brain. It felt good to be able to put it all on the page. Of course, Peter will have hated it but she doesn’t care. It’s the truth and she doesn’t care if he thinks she’s being vengeful, she has the right to tell her story,” the insider notes.
Not only do Christie and Peter, 65, share daughter Sailor, 26, he also adopted the entrepreneur’s son, Jack Brinkley-Cook, 30, from Christie’s short-lived 1994 marriage to Ricky Taubman.
Christie Brinkley, Peter Cook and kids Jack and Sailor
In Uptown Girl, the Michigan native wrote about how she was approached by a man she’d never met while giving a graduation speech at a local high school in the Hamptons in 2006.
“Excuse me,” Christie wrote. “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,” Christie continued, saying she then looked into the audience to see Peter sitting with Jack. “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?” she asked in the book.
“There were many times when I wondered if I would ever recover,” Christie told readers, saying that her children provided the power to get through the pain. “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.”