Supermodel Christie Brinkley opens up about past marriages and regrets

Christie Brinkley is no stranger to love.

The legendary supermodel, who has been married four times, admitted she’s a “fool for love” in a candid new interview with the New York Times. In her conversation with the outlet, she spoke in detail about her divorces, and whether she’s willing to open her heart again.

“I’m too trusting,” she admitted when asked about what she’s learned from her marriages. “I’m a fool for love. That love takes work. Sometimes you need to rely on experts. I wish I could have found ways to save some; I wish I hadn’t married others.”

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Christie Brinkley called herself a “fool for love” when discussing her past relationships. (Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit)

Brinkley’s first husband was artist Jean-François Allaux – the two wed in 1975, when she was 21 years old. They divorced in 1981, and four years later she married Billy Joel. Brinkley and Joel divorced in 1994, and that same year she married real estate developer Richard Taubman. She divorced him a year later, and a year after that she married architect Peter Cook. She was with him until their contentious divorce was finalized in 2008.

She told the New York Times, “I always believed in soul mates. I thought I had four of them. Now I’m not sure. Maybe I had my two soul mates with Jean and Billy. Maybe I rushed out of my marriage to Jean. Maybe I should have tried to make it work longer with Billy. I did start to wonder if maybe it’s me – if I was unlovable.”

Christie Brinkley, pictured in Vogue in 1977, became a model after moving to Paris in the ’70s to become an artist. (Stan Malinowski/Condé Nast via Getty Images)

When asked, she clarified, “I’m not unlovable, but the relationships I was in made me feel unloved. I have enough self-esteem to know that in the right arms, I’m lovable. And I wasn’t loved correctly. One loved my money more than me. Another loved his drink more than me. Another loved young women more than me. And in my first one, I loved my freedom more than him.”

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Her first husband, Allaux, was the one she said she left for her “freedom.” She said that with him, it was “love at first sight,” and while their marriage was successful for years, it was a “slow dissolve.” 

“I got married too young. I started to feel constrained and regretted being tied down,” she admitted.

Brinkley met her first husband when she was 19. (Fairchild Archive/Penske Media via Getty Images)

In her recently released memoir, “Uptown Girl,” Brinkley explained that she’d met Allaux when she was just 19 years old. She’d moved to Paris to become an artist and met him soon after, and after six years of marriage, she wrote, “I started to wonder what else – and who else – might be out there.”

In the time since she’d met him, she’d “changed considerably, transforming from a girl from Malibu bound for Paris with only a backpack, paints and bohemian ideals to a top model with two mortgages, an endless zeal for adventure, and one big career.”

Joel is the ex-husband she claimed “loved his drink more than me” – the singer has been open about his past struggles with addiction, and Brinkley wrote in her memoir that “booze was the other woman.” She said of their marriage, “When you become the bad cop, it’s over. If we had been older when it happened, maybe we could have figured it out.”

Joel and Brinkley were married for nine years. (Sonia Moskowitz/Images/Getty Images)

In an April interview with Today.com, Brinkley explained that her relationship with Joel was the most difficult to write about in her memoir because they’re still friends, but she said he gave her his blessing.

“He said, ‘Just say what you need to say,'” Brinkley said. “And I think that’s part of his healing, so I applaud him for all of that. It takes a lot of courage.”

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Joel wrote “Uptown Girl” in honor of Brinkley. (Arnal/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

As for the ex who “loved my money more than me,” Brinkley referred to third husband Taubman. “Ricky was a larger-than-life character who married me for my money,” she claimed. “Our relationship was complicated by the fact that I was pregnant, and I wanted to make the right decisions. The relationship came on the heels of my divorce from Billy, which I was devastated about.”

In “Uptown Girl,” she wrote that after their son Jack was born, she had a session with her therapist and made the choice to give their marriage one more shot. She took Jack from New York, where she’d delivered the baby, back home to Taubman in Colorado, and she claimed that when she arrived, he asked her for money.

Brinkley, pictured with third husband Richard Taubman in 1994, claimed he married her for her money. (Getty Images)

“That’s when I knew that this was not nor could it ever be love or even a real relationship: it was usership, manipulation, and at its worst, emotional torture,” she wrote. “I booked a flight back to New York.”

When she arrived, she said Taubman called her and told her “I’m going to walk away from you and the baby” just like her biological father did to her. After that phone call, she filed for divorce.

Finally, the one who “loved young women more than me” refers to Cook, who had an affair while married to Brinkley. “I was married to a stranger who had other lives. I had three children. I wanted to protect them from the fallout and from their life being blown apart. The divorce lasted for years. It was agonizing.”

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Brinkley and Cook got divorced after he admitted to cheating on her with his 18-year-old assistant. (Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

Brinkley filed for divorce from Cook in 2006 after finding out that he’d been having an affair with his teenage assistant. The divorce proceedings took place in open court, and at one point in her testimony, she sobbed, saying, “I felt like the man who I was living with, I just didn’t know who he was… anymore. Who is he? Who is this man who comes down and sits at the dining room table and acts like he’s been at work?” per ABC News.

In her memoir, she called her relationship with Cook “one of the most tormented experiences I’ve ever had.”

Brinkley went through a long, very public divorce with Cook. (Gary Gershoff/WireImage via Getty Images)

Brinkley is a mother of three: daughters Alexa Ray, who she shares with Joel, and Sailor, who she shares with Cook, as well as son Jack, who she had with Taubman but who was later adopted by Cook.

The model confessed the thing she regrets most is “Not being able to sit with an open photo album with my husband and go, ‘Look, remember this? Remember the kids?’”

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Despite everything, Brinkley admitted to the New York Times that she’s still open to the idea of finding a partner.

Brinkley said that despite the hard times she’s experienced in relationships, she would get involved romantically with someone again “because I believe in love.” (XNY/Star Max/GC Images)

“Everything I’ve been through, all the pain, the stupidity, I would do it again because I believe in love,” she shared. “I think it would be sad not to. I’m not sure I want to give up the freedom I have now. It gets harder to meet people and harder to trust. It would take a special person to get me to want to share my life. I have made peace without having it. I have been making it through without a man for a lot of years. I don’t need a person to make me happy. I’m happy.”

She added, “But I have so much happiness in me, I would love to share it with someone I love.”

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