Billy Joel and Ex-Wife Christie Brinkley’s Relationship Timeline

Billy Joel and ex-wife Christie Brinkley have remained on good terms in the years after their divorce.

The former couple tied the knot in March 1985, welcoming daughter Alexa that December. After nearly 10 years of marriage, Joel and Brinkley divorced in August 1994. (Joel also shares daughters Della and Remy with his fourth wife, Alexis Roderick. Brinkley shares son Jack with Richard Taubman and daughter Sailor with Peter Cook.)

Despite their split, the musician and the former model have kept an amicable relationship — and they’ll even cohost Christmas carol singalongs together during the holiday season.

“Many years after our divorce, Billy would still come to my house for the Christmas singalong and play the piano, and all our friends would come over and sing Christmas carols,” Brinkley told Social Life magazine in 2019. “Singalongs are one of my favorite things to do. And you know that’s what makes everybody happy.”

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Keep scrolling for a look back at Joel and Brinkley’s relationship timeline:

Early 1983

While vacationing in St. Barts, Joel and Brinkley crossed paths at an airport.

“I recognized her immediately,” Joel later told Rolling Stone. “She was more beautiful than she was in her pictures — [I thought], ‘Oh, wow, that’s Christie Brinkley. I wonder if she knows who I am.’ So I did what I call an album cover — I tried to look like me on an album cover. I gave it every angle I could. She didn’t recognize me from a hole in the wall.”

Later, they bumped into each other at a bar where Joel attempted to impress her with his music.

“The music was the key to the introduction,” he recalled. “She sat down and started singing, too.”

September 1983

Joel was initially inspired by then-girlfriend Elle Macpherson to write the song that became “Uptown Girl,” which he originally called “Uptown Girls.” When he sparked his romance with Brinkley — who starred in the “Uptown Girl” music video — Joel changed his vision.

“Rather than it [being] about all these different girls, she became the Uptown Girl. I started writing it about one person,” he told Howard Stern in 2010, confirming Brinkley was his inspiration.