Cindy Crawford has been teaming up with her good friend Christie Brinkley to help plug her memoir and a source exclusively tells Closer that she’s also looking to play matchmaker and pair her up with one of her and husband Rande Gerber’s eligible male pals.
“Cindy has known, and loved, Christie for years. When she was a young model starting out in the industry, Christie was always very kind and welcoming and that’s not something Cindy will ever forget,” the insider reveals to Closer. “In a lot of ways she looks up to Christie because she’s been such a trailblazer in the industry and in life, too.”
The source adds that Cindy, 59, “can’t believe Christie is 71” because “she looks decades younger and has the energy of someone half her age.”
“Cindy can’t fathom how a woman as phenomenal as Christie could be single. Cindy has set her mind to fixing that. Between her and Rande, they have a huge circle of friends and Cindy is putting the word out to all of them that she’s on a mission to find Christie a quality man,” the insider says. “Christie is very touched that Cindy would want to go out of her way like this.”
The source continues of Christine, “And truth be told, she is genuinely hoping it will lead to something because she is quite lonely these days. She’d love to have a partner. She’s not going to settle but love is still something she hopes for.”
Christie has been married four times. Her first marriage was to François Allaux from 1973-1981, followed by her high-profile marriage to Billy Joel from 1985 until 1994. The model took another gamble at love when she married Richard Taubman in 1994, though they divorced the following year. Her fourth and latest marriage was to Peter Halsey Cook, whom she was married to from 1996 until 2008.
The Monroe, Michigan, native recently opened up about her marriage to Billy, 76, in her April memoir, Uptown Girl.
“He definitely didn’t look like a rock star,” Christie wrote of her first impression of the “Piano Man” singer.
She also recalled their first meeting and admitted that she quickly fell “hopelessly in love” with him.
“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 wrote in the book, according to People.
Billy Joel, Christie Brinkley
Christie added that she wasn’t even sure if his name was Billy Joel or Billy Joe upon their first meeting. “I decided to play it safe,” she wrote. “You look like a ‘Joe’ to me.”
“We laughed like you couldn’t believe,” she recalled to People about the early days of their relationship. “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?”
She continued, “When I heard him sing on stage, I found myself undeniably attached to this physically hot and charismatic man.”