I bet she never had a backstreet guy,
I bet her momma never told her why.
I'm gonna try for an uptown girl,
She's been living in her white bread world...
And so go the lyrics to one of Billy Joel's biggest hits, "Uptown Girl," a song germinating Billy's head as he thought about a fantasy girl and was dating Elle Macpherson another supermodel, in 1983. The song's lyrics further morphed into being as his relationship with Christie Brinkley commenced, who he married in 1985. The music video is a classic.
I keep bumping into Christie Brinkley. Well, not literally, but she's everywhere these days hawking her memoir, "Uptown Girl."
Last week I saw her on the Fox Network morning news show "Good Day New York" being interviewed by Rosanna Scotto and Curt Menefee. Christie was flashing her megawatt smile, decked out in a yellow top with a black miniskirt that effectively showed off legs that no 71-year-old woman should be expected to have.
Any interview on that news show is never lengthy. The interview of course discussed the book. Most of the banter was about Billy Joel, Christie's second, and probably most famous husband of her four. Christie's got a track record for marriages. She and Billy divorced in 1994 over Billy's out-of-control drinking.
Many, many years ago I was riding the LIRR to work when the guy next to be was reading that Christie was divorcing her third husband Richard Taubman, a real estate developer, and whom she was with when the ski helicopter they were crashed in Telluride, Colorado in 1994. Both were injured, Richard more so. She and Richard married afterward in 1995.
When the fellow next to me read that now Richard was going out of the picture with Christie, I could hear him say to himself, "who's next, Ross Perot?" (He wasn't.)
The Sports Illustrated swimsuit appearance in 1975 further vaulted Christie into the supermodel stratosphere. She was already appearing on numerous magazine covers, and the tally is said to have topped out at 500 covers. She was on S.I.'s cover three consecutive years: 1979, 1980, and 1981.
I remember the 1975 S.I. issue because I was getting a subscription at the time. I remember the photo of Christie in it. The swimsuit edition was becoming an eagerly awaited issue. I remember the mailman (Okay, letter carrier) crossing our lawn delivering the mail while flipping through the pages. For years I saved that edition.
After Christie's appearance on Good Day New York I next bumped into a back page story of her in the Wall Street Journal's Mansion edition on May 2, 2025. When you're as famous and as photogenic as Christie, media attention is guaranteed.
The Mansion section's back page features a celebrity and a short bio of their upbringing and a description of the homes where they lived and are now living.
She grew up in Monroe, Michigan with an abusive father who whipped her butt with a belt, who the mother divorced when she was 8. When she was 5 months old the family moved from Michigan to Canoga Park in Los Angeles. The move is described as necessary for a transfer for father Herb Hudson, who was a milkman. (This part seems odd that a milkman was transferred halfway across the country, but that's what is the paper.)
The mother met a TV writer Don Brinkley, who adopted Christie and her brother Greg. Christie studied art and went to Paris in 1975 to study further and worked for an illustrator at Air France. Her first husband was Jean-Francois Allaux who she was married to from 1973-1981.
When Jean-Francois was drafted by the French Army she got her a dog to keep her company. In Paris, with no phone in the apartment she was using a pay phone to contact the dog's vet. It was during one of those phone calls that she was approached by a fashion photographer who said she should be a model. And so she did.
At the end of the WSJ's Mansion piece they always close with a little bio sketch of the subject's age and what they're up to these days,
Christie is estimated to be worth $100 million. The bio sketch describers her as "71, an actress, an entrepreneur and model...She owns TWRHLL clothing line." They left out she is a major Hampton's house flipper who always sells something for way more than she paid for it after redecorating it.
In an Extra interview she admits that there's no one romantically in her life right now, but who knows, she's still out there.
I'd love to really bump into her.
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