Christie Brinkley Remembered the Heartbreaking Moment She Knew Billy Joel & Her Were Over

The two were married from 1985 to 1994.

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In 1994, Christie Brinkley was among the passengers of a terrifying helicopter crash above the San Juan mountain range in Colorado. And while she left the accident with minor injuries like the rest of the passengers, the side effects from the moment lingered for years, and became a turning point in her rocky marriage to Billy Joel.

At the time, Brinkley and Joel were separated, with Brinkley asking Joel for a divorce a year earlier in 1993 after eight years of marriage. And, according to Brinkley’s newly released memoir, Uptown Girl, how Joel reacted to her accident played a major role in their demise.

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“In that moment, I thought my prince had finally come to rescue me, and I waited for Billy to say the words I so badly wanted to hear: ‘I almost lost you, I can’t live without you, I love you,’” she recalled of after the crash, per Us Weekly. But while she felt he was her “knight in shining armor” at first, she overheard a conversation of his that changed everything.

“I was very much awake when I heard him say the words I didn’t ever want to hear: ‘No, don’t worry. I’m not going back to her. I just need to see her through this,'” Brinkley recalled. “And just like that, the dream broke apart like debris.”

Billy Joel with his then-wife, Christie Brinkley, at a Divine Celibration honoring Billy at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, December 1990. Oscar Abolafia/Everett Collection

Also in the memoir, Brinkley remembered the harrowing moment that she realized her helicopter was about to crash.

“The crash was sudden and traumatic, coming out of nowhere,” she described, per People. “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.”

Along with Brinkley, also on board were real estate developer Ricky Taubman, the founder of Telluride’s Sheridan Arts Foundation Sandra Will Carradine, Carradine’s 11-year-old son Cade, the pilot Tom Sharp, and ski guide Mike Friedman.

“Suddenly, it became crystal clear that the only thing that really mattered in life and at death was the same: love. Love,” she said. That’s when she thought of her daughter with Joel, Alexa Ray Joel, who was born in 1985.

“I focused on Alexa Ray, holding her pure in my thoughts and hoping to project all my heart and soul to her so she would feel it at the very moment of impact,” Brinkley remembered.

As for her marriage to Joel, Brinkley detailed in the memoir how Joel’s issues with alcoholism led to their separation. “To be clear, I never wanted to end things with Billy,” she admitted. “The drinking was bigger than the both of us. Booze was the other woman, and it was beginning to seem that he preferred to be with her rather than me.” The two went their separate way by 1994.

Before you go, click here to see celebrities who have struggled with drug or alcohol addiction.

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