Christie Brinkley called out one of her ex-husbands for a massive “betrayal” in her new memoir.
The model wrote in “Uptown Girl,” out Tuesday, that she was having lunch in New York City with Richard Taubman when he “suddenly and casually dropped” a bombshell.
The real estate entrepreneur told his then-wife that he had “tracked down [her] biological father, Herb Hudson, and spoken to him by phone.”
Brinkley, now 71, felt “shocked and outraged” by the disclosure and immediately burst into tears.
The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover girl had not spoken to her estranged dad since she was 8 — and she described how he allegedly abused her elsewhere in the book.
“It didn’t matter how good or quiet I was: Herb always seemed to find a reason to punish me,” she recalled of being beat with a belt, “rubbed raw with towels” and having her mouth washed with soap.
Brinkley felt “a huge sense of relief” when Hudson relinquished his parental rights before her mom, Marge Brinkley, married Don Brinkley in 1957.
Shortly after Taubman reached out to Hudson — and days after Christie gave birth to son Jack Brinkley Cook, now 29, in 1995 — the former couple called it quits.
The blond beauty claimed Taubman referenced her estranged father during the breakup by saying, “We’re going to make a deal. I’m going to walk away from you and the baby just like Herb Hudson did.”
She recalled, “In that second, the room collapsed around me, as Ricky’s words hung in the air like dark, dirty soot, choking me. … Sometimes, history has a horrible way of repeating itself.”
Christie and Taubman’s short-lived but “hypnotizing” relationship began after they survived a 1994 helicopter crash, which she believes led to a “trauma bond.”
Before Taubman, Christie was married to artist Jean-François Allaux and singer Billy Joel, welcoming daughter Alexa Ray Joel, 39, with the latter.
She went on to have a “tortured” marriage to Peter Cook, with whom she shares daughter Sailor Brinkley Cook, 26 — and described to readers the “cliché” moment she found out the architect was cheating on her with a teenager.
“I was so stunned that I froze,” she remembered of the 18-year-old’s father exposing the infidelity at a graduation ceremony. “It was so insane that it was almost funny.”
As for her headline-making marriage to Billy, 75, from 1985 to 1994, Christie wrote candidly about living with his alcohol addiction despite her “hesitance” to put certain anecdotes to paper.
She recently told Page Six that while the Grammy winner was “probably” her “soulmate,” she “couldn’t live with him.”
Christie explained, “To be clear, I never wanted to end things with Billy. I read every self-help book I could find. … We went to see a string of psychiatrists, psychologists and other medical doctors.
“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.”
