Christie Brinkley Reveals How She Fell for Billy Joel (Unique)

They met at a dive motel bar in St. Barts in 1983.

“He undoubtedly didn’t appear like a rock star,” says Christie Brinkley of her first impression of the man sitting on the piano, Billy Joel.

She describes their memorable assembly in her thrilling new memoir, Uptown Lady, excerpted on this week’s PEOPLE, which particulars her troublesome childhood, five-decade modeling profession and tumultuous romantic life — together with falling “hopelessly in love” with the piano man.

“The person was sunburned to a crisp, his face the identical coloration as cranberries and unctuous with oil, which he’d undoubtedly slathered on to assuage the burn, topped by what I wish to name ‘the Lengthy Island bubble:’ a carapace of curly shellacked hair in style within the Eighties in elements of suburban New York,” Brinkley, 71, writes within the ebook.

At first, she wasn’t even certain if his identify was Billy Joel or Billy Joe. “I made a decision to play it protected,” she writes. “You appear like a ‘Joe’ to me,” she stated.

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Earlier than lengthy, they had been courting. “We laughed such as you could not imagine,” she tells PEOPLE. “But in addition he was so delicate and he did all of the old school issues, 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 might I not fall in love with him?” 

“After I heard him sing on stage,” she provides, “I discovered myself undeniably connected to this bodily scorching and charismatic man.”

He might additionally make her chuckle like no different. “We known as one another Bada Bing and Bada Growth,” she recollects. “As a result of we had been actually like youngsters falling in love. We had been abruptly fumbling and stuttering and dropping issues.”

Cooking dinner was by no means simply … cooking. “We had been the largest, best Italians making Italian meals. Si, Christie …. After which we’d begin dancing.”

Making the video for his hit tune Uptown Lady on a scorching summer season night time in 1983 additionally took on a lifetime of it’s personal. “It was only a bunch of mates,” she says with fun. “The director saved saying ‘Extra hoity-toity Christie.’” And the remainder is historical past. 

They married on March 23, 1985, had a daughter Alexa Ray, and commenced constructing their dream home within the Hamptons. Inside just a few years, the depth and calls for of their massive lives and careers introduced new stress — and issues for the couple.

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“To be clear,” she writes, ”I by no means needed to finish issues with Billy. However his ingesting was larger than the each of us.”

Right now, she displays, “Ultimately, when the connection isn’t functioning the best way you need it to be anymore — that’s the worst sort of loneliness since you simply can’t make it work collectively and that’s painful.”

They every went on to marry different individuals. Christie married Colorado actual property developer Ricky Taubman after they survived a harrowing helicopter crash in 1994. They divorced a 12 months later after which she wed architect Peter Prepare dinner In 1996 — a wedding that resulted in scandal, headlines and a six 12 months divorce and custody battle. “There have been some doozies,” she says. 

In any case these years, she and Billy stay mates and she or he says their relationship is “nice,”

”He lives primarily in Florida so we don’t see him as a lot as when he lived in Sag Harbor,” she notes, “however when he comes by to see Alexa, he’ll are available and say hey.”

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And she or he’s each keen and anxious for him to learn her new ebook. “Alexa described it to him,” she says, “and he’s like, ‘Sounds good, no drawback.’”

Uptown Lady by Christie Brinkley comes out April 29 from Harper Affect and is accessible for preorder now, wherever books are bought.