Billy Joel opens up about painful split from Christie Brinkley

Billy Joel opened up about his heartbreaking split from model Christie Brinkley.

The 76-year-old musician, who tied the knot with Christie in 1985 and parted ways in 1994, looked back on their relationship in the HBO documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes.

“Here I am dating this beautiful supermodel and ... me? I’m from Hicksville. What am I doing with her? What’s she doing with me? But that was a very productive time for me. I wrote a lot of songs for her. She was a muse,” Billy said.

Recalling the beginning of their relationship Billy noted it was “so much fun,” but during his rising fame, he took the relationship for granted.

“I was not able to be at home. I was not able to be with my family. It was a very sad time for me.”

“I realized love is not concrete. You feel like it is, but there are things eating away at it. And in the end, it all catches up. It’s hard. I was so devastated.”

He also revealed that his then-wife Katie Lee gave him a final warning before he entered rehab in 2005.

Katie said, “I felt like he needed to be creating, he needed to be making music, performing, to turn down that anxiety of not having an artistic outlet. And there were struggles with addiction. It was really hard to navigate that, because I had no experience with it.”