Christie Brinkley Reveals Divorce Details in New 'Uptown Girl' Memoir

Christie Brinkley is opening up like never before. The 71-year-old supermodel’s long-awaited memoir, Uptown Girl, hit shelves April 29 and is already making headlines for its revelations — including painful details about her marriage to architect Peter Cook.

“It was the most tortured relationship I’ve ever had,” Brinkley writes.

The two were married for eight years and share daughter Sailor and son Jack, who Cook adopted. In the memoir, Brinkley recalls learning of Cook’s affair while giving a graduation speech at a Hamptons high school, when a man she didn’t know approached her.

“Excuse me,” he said, “I need to tell you that arrogant husband of yours has been having an affair with my teenage daughter.”

“When your whole world falls apart and you realize in a heartbeat you’ve suddenly become the cliche middle-aged woman whose husband is having an affair with a much (much) younger woman, what do you do?” she writes.

Brinkley says she later found proof on their shared home computer — what she calls a “labyrinth” of files. The split led to a six-year court battle.

“I didn’t say anything to anybody,” she writes. “But one day when I came out of the courtroom I said, ‘Google a narcissist.’ The letters started pouring in. So many women said, ‘Thank you. I realize other women are going through it. I’m not alone.’”

Uptown Girl: A Memoir has 4.2 stars from readers on Amazon and is published by HarperCollins, which writes of the book:

“…Christie shares what life has been like, both in front of and behind the cameras, considering the girl she was alongside the woman she has become. Her stories are as heartening as they are eye-opening, as she recounts her most formative chapters, including the betrayal by her biological father as a child, her lifelong passion for art, her whirlwind career, her four tumultuous marriages — including her heartbreaking divorce from Billy Joel — and the harrowing experiences that almost cut her life short.”

The publisher also notes that the book features more than 100 photographs and never-before-seen pieces of Brinkley’s original artwork.