From the chopper crash to romancing the Piano Man: Christie Brinkley bares all in her memoir 

Christie Brinkley is still a shining example of beauty, tenacity, and genuineness at the age of 71. The iconic supermodel provides a novel glimpse into the person beneath the glittery mask in her recently published memoir, Uptown Girl, where she discusses everything from a chopper crash to family life and her relationship with Billy Joel to cosmetic procedures, remarriage, and aging.

Christie Brinkley's life from childhood to the present

Early Childhood

Starting with her early life, Christie Brinkley had a very tough upbringing where her father, Herb Hudson, would physically abuse her. By profession, he was a milkman who thrashed his own daughter with belts and washed her mouth with soap and rubbed her raw with towels. Writing about her father, she mentioned:

"It didn’t matter how good or quiet I was: Herb always seemed to find a reason to punish me."

She added:

"I still have memories of those days with Herb, but they come in fits and starts. And all are in black and white, like the photos in the albums my mom kept from those days, where Herb is cut out of every picture, like a body removed from a crime scene."

She recalls the moment when her mother divorced him and remarried a man named Don Brinkley, who took up the responsibilities of a father after Herb relinquished his duties and rights as a parent. Writing about the incident, she was overjoyed.

Paris and Modeling

At the age of 19, Christie Brinkley went to Paris to study art. She was discovered while standing in a phone booth and was thrown into the world of modeling. She quickly became famous and became one of the most recognizable figures of the 1980s.

In Paris, she met and fell in love with Jean-François Allaux, one of her great loves. They got married, but when her modeling career took off, their marriage terminated discreetly. Modeling was tough, as her diet was restrictive: nothing in excess and no sugar.

Loves and losses

After him, Christie Brinkley got in a relationship with Olivier Chandon, who was an heir to the French champagne, who later died in a terrible car accident. Their love was adventurous, intense, but short. His death left her heartbroken, which led to her understanding of love and loss.

She soon met Billy Joel, the "Piano Man," her second husband and her other great love. They met at a dive bar, and things took off immediately, and they got married. Talking about Joel and her chemistry, she wrote:

"We laughed like you couldn’t believe."

They were married for 11 years and also shared a daughter. She divorced Billy Joel for his alcohol addiction, as it caused her a lot of anxiety, as Billy would disappear for days. She wrote about her ending with Billy:

“It wasn't functioning in the way you want it to anymore and it was painful.”

She still remains good friends with Billy Joel, who also gave her permission to write about him in her memoir.

The helicopter crash that almost killed her

Christie Brinkley almost died in a helicopter crash in Telluride, Colorado, in 1994. She had gone heli-skiing with pilot Tom Sharp, ski guide Mike Friedman, Sandra Will Carradine, her 11-year-old son Cade, and real estate developer Ricky Taubman, whom she later went on to date.

During the third successful run, their chopper plummeted out of the sky. Without any time for an emergency landing, it plummeted 300 feet straight down. She wrote:

"The crash was sudden and traumatic, coming out of nowhere. We had already taken two runs and were circling to land for a third, on the saddle of a faraway peak, when the helicopter just fell from the sky, plunging into a freefall from three hundred feet overhead, with no autorotation."

After this incident, Brinkley saw the importance of love. The helicopter changed her perspective on life.

Ricky Taubman and emotional trauma

Christie Brinkley later went on to trauma bond with Ricky Taubman, who was also present on the helicopter that crashed. They got married and she soon gave birth to their son Jack. However, the romance quickly fell apart.

When Taubman casually disclosed that he had located her violent biological father and he had already spoken to him on the phone. Only a few days after Jack's birth, they split. Christie Brinkley even mentioned that Ricky's words caused her emotional trauma:

"'We’re going to make a deal. I’m going to walk away from you and the baby just like Herb Hudson did.'"

She added:

"In that second, the room collapsed around me, as Ricky’s words hung in the air like dark, dirty soot, choking me with so much shock and outrage that I felt breathless. Sometimes, history has a horrible way of repeating itself."

She decided that she did not want the same fate she suffered as a kid. She decided to move forward on her own terms.

Christie Brinkley's resilience and adaptability

Christie Brinkley's versatility, dedication, and sincerity to her art are the foundations of her success. She changed with the times, left modeling to pursue a career in business and activism, but stayed true to her principles.

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