Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel maintain a “great” friendship nearly 31 years after their divorce.
The model revealed that she and the father of their child, Alexa Ray Joel, are on good terms in an interview with People published Wednesday.
”He lives mainly in Florida so we don’t see him as much as when he lived in Sag Harbor, but when he comes by to see Alexa, he’ll come in and say hello,” Brinkley, 71, told the outlet.
Brinkley looked back at their relationship with fondness, recalling how they had an immediate connection.
“We laughed like you couldn’t believe,” she told People. “But also he was so sensitive and he did all the old-fashioned things, 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 could I not fall in love with him?”
Brinkley said that when she would watch the “Piano Man” singer perform on stage, she found herself “undeniably attached” to a “physically hot and charismatic man.”
“We called each other Bada Bing and Bada Boom. Because we were really like teenagers falling in love,” she remembered. “We were suddenly fumbling and stuttering and dropping things.”
Their relationship deepened while filming his famous music video “Uptown Girl” in 1983 and two years later, they tied the knot.
Unfortunately, the pressures of the spotlight were too much for their marriage and they divorced in 1994, she revealed in an excerpt of her forthcoming memoir, “Uptown Girl.”
“To be clear, I never wanted to end things with Billy,” she wrote. “But his drinking was bigger than the both of us.”
She told People, “In the end, when the relationship isn’t functioning the way you want it to be anymore — that’s the worst kind of loneliness because you just can’t make it work together and that’s painful.”
Despite their romantic downfall, these days the duo still manages to co-parent amicably.
The “Parks and Recreation” alum went on to marry Richard Taubman in 1994 but they divorced after a year.
She then married Peter Cook in 1996 and they welcomed two children — son Jack, 29, and daughter Sailor, 26 — before divorcing in 2008.
Brinkley was also married to François Allaux from 1973 to 1981.
Joel, for his part, has also been married three other times outside of his marriage to Brinkley. He was married to Elizabeth Ann Weber from 1973 to 1982, Katie Lee from 2004 to 2009 and he married Alexis Roderick in 2015.
He and Roderick share two daughters: Della Rose, 9, and Remy Anne, 7.
Joel, 75, is apparently looking forward to reading Brinkley’s memoir.
“Alexa described it to him and he’s like, ‘Sounds good, no problem,’” Brinkley divulged.
Her book will officially be released April 29.
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