Billy Joel 'Went Missing For Days' Leaving Ex Christie Brinkley 'With Visions of His Car Wrapped Around A Tree' and 'A Panic' The Model Couldn't Shake
Christie Brinkley revealed ex Billy Joel would leave her for days while the two were married.
April 28 2025, Published 6:30 p.m. ET
Christie Brinkley hinted she and Billy Joel could have lasted forever – if he didn't leave her for days at a time.
The model spilled on their marriage ahead of her Uptown Girl memoir release, saying Joel would vanish for days on booze benders – which often left her haunted by visions of him wrapped around a tree, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
The model said she would have horrible visions of Joel's car 'wrapped around a tree' when he would leave.
After four marriages and heartbreaks that left her "crushed," Brinkley, now 71, has stayed closest to her second husband Joel, 75.
She even named her new memoir after the 1983 hit he wrote for her.
Brinkley said she and Joel were 'probably really soulmates,' but his drinking binges often left things in a bad spot.
Married from 1985 to 1994, the couple share a daughter, singer Alexa Ray, 39 – but as Brinkley told PageSix, it was the Piano Man's drinking that ultimately tore them apart.
She explained: "If there wasn’t that issue … I do think that we were probably really soulmates, it was an amazing time of my life.
"I had so much fun. We were such nomads, gypsies – just between his job and mine, we were seeing the world… it was wonderful, really wonderful."
Brinkley revealed Joel would vanish for days on drinking binges, even disappearing from their daughter's fifth birthday party for two days – leaving her tormented by visions of his car smashed into a tree and gripped by a panic she couldn’t shake.
One time, Joel vanished in the middle of their Thanksgiving dinner, and Brinkley locked him out of their Hawaii hotel suite after hearing he'd been spotted with an Australian actress.
He came back "visibly and audibly drunk," Brinkley wrote in her book, and in a fit of rage, hurled a chaise lounge through the patio doors – shattering the glass.
The breaking point came when Joel, drunk, blamed his band for eating his pasta at their East Hamptons home, even though he'd eaten it all himself.
Revealing she asked him for a divorce the next day, Brinkley said: "He was acting delusional in a way I’d never seen before."
Brinkley opens up about her marriages in her new memoir, 'Uptown Girl,' released on April 29, 2025.
Brinkley said: "To be clear, I never wanted to end things with Billy. I read every self-help book I could find… we went to see a string of psychiatrists, psychologists and other medical doctors."
She added: "The 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 me."
The Movin' Out singer first went to rehab in 1992 and got sober, but returned in 2005 after a relapse.
In 2023, he told the Los Angeles Times that he stopped drinking "a couple of years ago." He is now married to his fourth wife, Alexis Roderick, and they have young daughters Della Rose and Remy Anne.
Brinkley continued: "He’s the father of my firstborn and we spent such great formative years together. And I’ll love him forever. Things just reached a point where I knew I couldn’t live with him."
She also spoke to Joel before writing her new book.
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She revealed: "Billy said, 'Go ahead and tell your story… the good, the bad, whatever you need to say.' Leaving Billy wasn’t easy for me to do — and it's not easy to say anything bad about somebody that I hold in such high regard… (although) I don’t think it’s bad."
Brinkley also hopes her story will support those struggling with addiction.
The exes share a 39-year-old daughter, Alexa Ray Joel.
The model explained: "When you’re in the throes of a drinking addiction, you don’t remember what you did. You wake up the next day and It’s the person who is counting on you who knows what happened.
"And it’s brave of Billy to say to people around him, 'You can speak freely, tell your story.' And I think that’s part of his recovery."
Brinkley's new memoir, Uptown Girl, is available for purchase on Tuesday, April 29, where she opens up about her myriad of relationships – the good, the bad, and the ugly.
