Christie Brinkley is pleased that she and ex-husband Billy Joel started out as friends
Christie Brinkley is pleased that she and Billy Joel started out as friends but admitted that she did "everything she could" to save their marriage when it came to it.
Christie Brinkley is pleased that she and Billy Joel started out as friends.
The 71-year-old model tied the knot with 'Uptown Girl' singer Billy, 75, in 1985 but when she met him, he had been dating her friend Elle Macpherson, but they "immediately" hit it off with one another.
She told Fox News Digital: "Elle and I met Billy on the same night, and that was the night that I thought I know I want to be friends with this guy forever, but I had other things going on in my life, but I knew I wanted to keep him as a friend. We hit it off immediately. I mean, immediately.
"And then when he came back into my life and he was so wonderful and I started to see him differently. And so I think it was really great to start out with a friendship and have that friendship evolve into a full-on romantic adventure."
Christie and Billy eventually divorced after just under a decade together but she admitted that she "did everything" she could to save the marriage, even though it wasn't to be.
Writing in her new memoir 'Uptown Girl', she said: "I did everything for our marriage, constantly working to make myself, our home, and everything around us into whatever he could possibly want or hope for. I continually told him how much I loved him, making sure he always felt adored and appreciated, because he was.
"But his drinking was bigger than the both of us—booze was the other woman, and it was beginning to seem that, he preferred to be with ‘her’ rather than with me."
Just months after her divorce from Billy, Christie survived a helicopter crash and reflected that she made some "really bad choices" at the time and she was still "reeling" from the split.
She told PEOPLE: "I definitely had post-traumatic stress disorder and I was making some really bad choices. I was really lost.
"I was looking at myself in that chapter, like, what happened to you?
"I think I was reeling from losing Billy and and I was thinking Billy is going to come riding into town any second and go ‘I can’t lose you. I got in deeper. I didn’t take time to stop and reflect and learn."
Christie then married Richard Taubman in 1994 and they had Jack, 29, together but split up after just a year together.
The former 'Masked Singer' contestant, then married Peter Cook in 1996 and went on to have Sailor, 26, with him, but they divorced in 2008.
When asked about love in general, Christie insisted that it is something that needs to be "nurtured" but it cannot be "changed" to fit around a situation or a want.
She added: "Love is something that you have to cherish while you have it and nurture it, but you can’t hang onto it and you can’t change it or mold it to your desires."
