Billy Joel may have been married more than once, but only one ex-wife has her own theme song.
In HBO’s new documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes, the music legend opens up about his marriage to supermodel Christie Brinkley — and the unraveling that followed. “It was like being a teenager all over again,” Joel says of falling for Brinkley, whom he met in 1983 while vacationing in St. Barts. “Experiencing those same emotions that I had when I was first discovering romance and love.”
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They were married by 1985, welcomed daughter Alexa Ray that same year, and for a while, it really was the fantasy. “Here I am dating this beautiful supermodel and… me? I’m from Hicksville,” Joel says in the doc. “What am I doing with her? What’s she doing with me?” Still, he calls that time “very productive,” crediting Brinkley as a muse: “I wrote a lot of songs for her.”
But by the end of the decade, Joel’s life on the road — and mounting personal struggles — took a toll. Brinkley describes that period as Joel “boomeranging between being a family man and tortured artist,” often disappearing to drink while his life “unraveled.” His 1989 song “I Go to Extremes” wasn’t subtle about it, and neither was she: “Booze was the other woman,” Brinkley wrote in her 2025 memoir Uptown Girl. “And it was beginning to seem that he preferred to be with her rather than me.”
Joel, who also dealt with betrayal from his longtime manager Frank Weber during that time, doesn’t deny how hard it got. He filed a $90 million lawsuit over Weber’s alleged fraud and spent years touring to recoup the loss — all while drifting further from home. “It devastated me,” Joel says of the divorce. “But I never blamed her.”
Despite it all, the pair have stayed close. In April 2024, Joel serenaded Brinkley with “Uptown Girl” at Madison Square Garden. And when he paused touring due to health issues in 2025, Brinkley posted a warm tribute on behalf of their whole family.
She once said, “How close we can be depends on who he’s married to.” But no matter the chapter, the love — and the song — still plays.
Before you go, click here to see celebrity exes who will always be friends.
