For Christie Brinkley, owning your truth is no bed of roses.
The model and former wife of Billy Joel, who got candid on her life and career in the new memoir “Uptown Girl,” reflected on the making of the emotional book in a July 18 cover story for Social Life Magazine.
The book, which chronicles Brinkley’s early modeling days and her tumultuous romances with Joel and ex-husband Peter Cook, is accompanied by an audiobook narrated by the Sports Illustrated alum herself.
“There were parts where I thought, ‘Please, don’t cry,'” Brinkley, 71, told the magazine. “I tried to keep (my voice) level, but (the publisher) let me be. Let my voice crack. Let it show.”
Brinkley was married to Cook, an architect, from 1996 to 2008. The pair’s relationship unraveled after Brinkley discovered Cook had cheated on her with an 18-year-old. The former couple shares a daughter, 27-year-old Sailor Lee Brinkley Cook.
Christie Brinkley recalls Peter Cook affair, son’s reaction
In “Uptown Girl,” Brinkley writes that she learned about Cook’s affair while giving a commencement speech at Southampton High School in 2006. After her speech, a man reportedly approached her and said: “That arrogant husband of yours has been having an affair with my teenage daughter, and he won’t knock it off.”
Brinkley’s son Jack, whom she shares with ex-husband and real estate developer Richard Taubman, was in attendance at the graduation ceremony and allegedly observed the tense interaction.
“Jack’s face was frozen in panic. He felt it instantly,” Brinkley told Social Life Magazine. “He knew something was very wrong.”
Brinkley told her son, then 11, that she needed to go to the police station, where the man who informed her of the affair worked, to assist “a girl who needed her help.” It took four years before Brinkley and Cook concluded their media-frenzied court battle over custody of their kids.
Despite her marital woes, Brinkley remains optimistic about love, telling Fox News in an April interview that “love is the strongest thing in the whole world.”
“I just feel like my life is so full of love,” Brinkley told the outlet. “If there’s a romantic love that comes along as well, it would be wonderful. But I also feel very content and happy with the life that I have right now, and I consider my life to be very full of love.”
Contributing: Clare Mulroy, USA TODAY
