When Billy Joel Married His ‘Uptown Girl’

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Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel

Rock stars dating supermodels: Even in 1985 it was hardly a new concept. Since there’d been rock, musicians had always answered the question “Why did you get into this?” with “For the girls.” The tabloids and music mags were filled with tales of the exploits of rockers and gorgeous women.

Yet, there was something particularly off the charts about the March 23, 1985, wedding of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley. As People magazine put it at the time: “On the one hand, you have this absolutely gorgeous California cover-girl type—all teeth, hair, legs…And then, on the other hand, you have this scruffy rock ’n’ roller: dark, moody, looks like he was probably a hood when he was a kid. And these two are supposed to get married—on a boat in the middle of New York Harbor, no less—and live happily ever after? Come off it; it’ll never fly.”

But it did…for nearly a decade. They’d met two years earlier on the Caribbean island of St. Barts. Joel had divorced his first wife, Elizabeth Weber, in 1982; Brinkley had divorced French artist Jean-François Allaux in 1981. She’d been dating race car driver Olivier Chandon but in March 1983, he was killed in an accident. Although Brinkley had split from him by then she was nonetheless devastated. While in St. Barts with some fellow supermodels, she discovered that a certain piano player whose music she enjoyed was playing at a hotel bar.

As Joel explains in the 2025 documentary, Billy Joel: And So It Goes, “I’d been on the road year after year after year, writing, recording, touring, on and on and on. And I’d really never taken a vacation.”

He was talking with Paul Simon, who was a friend, who suggested that he go to “this place down in the Caribbean called St. Barts. You’ll really like it. It’s real chill. Nobody’s going to bother you.”

Joel knew who Brinkley was. He’d met her earlier, on a cruise shortly after his divorce. She and Elle MacPherson, another model, plus a teenager who said she was a singer and was hoping to land a recording contract, had checked out his playing in the ship’s lounge. Joel’s ensuing relationship with MacPherson took his mind off of his woes, but when that relationship began heading south, and he noticed Brinkley on the Caribbean trip, he remembered her.

“Right away, he cracked me up; he was so funny,” she says in the 2025 Joel documentary. “And he’s like, ‘Let me play a couple of songs for you.’ There’s a piano bench, so I go over and sit next to him and he goes, ‘What kind of music do you like?’ and I just launch into [starts singing a song]. And I’m doing the singing and Billy’s kind of like, you know ‘Okay, all right.’

“And then in comes Elle MacPherson. She is a huge Billy Joel fan. She’s got this gorgeous body, and she’s draping this gorgeous body all over the place to try and get his attention.”

“So I’m chatting up Elle,” Joel says. “I’m chatting up Christie…”

“All of a sudden,” recalls Brinkley, “this young girl comes over and goes, ‘Well, I can sing, too.’ [She] comes out with this voice.”

“It was Whitney freakin’ Houston,” exclaims Joel. “They were all beautiful. They were all models. And I was just a schlub with a sunburn playing the piano.”

“And then finally got a chance to play a couple songs,” says Brinkley. “He was just so fun and funny… and pink and shiny (laughs). There was something very endearing about him. We just had a great time, laughing, talking, all of that.” The pair decided to stay in touch.

“We were friends first,” Joel told Billboard. “I was nuts about her, but it took her a while to reciprocate.”

Finally, she fell for him too. “He was a strong support for me [after Chandon’s death],” she told People. “He’s a wonderful person, and, you know, it’s his heart and soul, his mind and everything that made me want to marry him.”

Watch Brinkley tell Howard Stern in 2015 the story of how she and Joel met

They were wed on World Yacht Enterprises’ 147-foot boat, the Riveranda, in New York Harbor. A hundred-fifty guests were invited. The press was not.

Their marriage produced a daughter, Alexa Ray, who is now a professional singer herself. It also produced many of Joel’s greatest songs—his album An Innocent Man, particularly “Uptown Girl,” was inspired by Brinkley. She famously starred in the video for that hit (scroll down to watch it).

Eventually they drifted, and on August 26, 1994, Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley were divorced. He’s been married twice since then, first to Katie Lee (he was 55, she was 23) and, since 2015, to Alexis Roderick. Brinkley, too, has been married two more times, both marriages ending in divorce.

Watch the “Uptown Girl” video starring Brinkley and some auto mechanic who thinks he has a shot with her