How Many Wives Has Billy Joel Had? His Marriage and Divorce History

Billy Joel has not only made headlines for his successful career — but also his marriages throughout the years.

The singer has been married four times. Joel walked down the aisle with his first wife, Elizabeth Weber, in 1973, but later divorced in 1982. Following his split from Weber, the “Vienna” singer married Christie Brinkley in 1985. The twosome welcomed daughter Alexa Ray Joel that same year before calling it quits in 1994.

Nearly a decade after his split from Brinkley, Joel married chef Katie Lee in 2004 when Lee was only 23 and Joel was 55. The pair announced their split in 2009. Joel later moved on with equestrian and former Morgan Stanley executive Alexis Roderick, and the couple tied the knot in 2015. Roderick and Joel welcomed daughters Della and Remy in 2015 and 2017, respectively.

Following Joel’s diagnosis with normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH), a brain disorder, in May 2025, Roderick spoke out in support of her husband.

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“Thank you for the outpouring of love and support,” she wrote via Instagram at the time. “We are so grateful for the wonderful care and swift diagnosis we received. Bill is beloved by so many, and to us, he is father and husband who is at the center of our world.”

Keep scrolling to learn more about Joel’s wives throughout the years:

Elizabeth Weber

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Joel met Weber in the late 1960s when she was married to his best friend and bandmate, Jon Small. The twosome ended up having an affair that nearly broke up the band and led to Joel drinking and attempting suicide twice.

“He never really said anything to me,” Small said in Joel’s HBO documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes in July 2025. “The only practical answer I can give as to why Billy took it so hard was because he loved me that much and that it killed him to hurt me that much. Eventually I forgave him.”

Joel noted that he felt “very, very guilty” about the affair.

“They had a child. I felt like a home wrecker,” he said in the documentary, adding that he changed his life by realizing he could “utilize all those emotions to channel that stuff into music.”

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Although they spent some time apart, Weber and Joel reconnected and got married in 1973. Weber became Joel’s business manager until they divorced in 1982.

“It was great then, it’s great whenever I think about it, and it’s great now,” Weber told People in June 2025 at the premiere of Joel’s documentary.

Christie Brinkley

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Following his split from Weber in 1982, Joel crossed paths with Brinkley at an airport in St. Barts in 1982.

“I recognized her immediately,” Joel told Rolling Stone in a 1986 interview. “She was more beautiful than she was in her pictures — [I thought], ‘Oh, wow, that’s Christie Brinkley. I wonder if she knows who I am.’ So I did what I call an album cover — I tried to look like me on an album cover. I gave it every angle I could. She didn’t recognize me from a hole in the wall.”

The twosome later bumped into each other at a bar where Joel impressed her with his music.

“The music was the key to the introduction. She sat down and started singing, too,” he recalled to the outlet.

Billy Joel and Ex-Wife Christie Brinkley’s Relationship Timeline

The model and Joel tied the knot in March 1985 and welcomed Alexa that December.

After nearly nine years of marriage, the twosome split in April 1994.

“To be clear, I never wanted to end things with Billy,” she wrote in her Uptown Girl memoir in April 2025. “I did everything for our marriage, constantly working to make myself, our home, and everything around us into whatever he could possibly want or hope for. I continually told him how much I loved him, make sure he always felt adored and appreciated, because he was.”

While promoting her book, Brinkley told Us Weekly that she considers Joel to be the love of her life because he “was the first person” she had a child with.

“That’s a very, very special thing,” she said.

The pair have continued to remain great friends and coparents, with Joel even serenading Brinkley with “Uptown Girl,” a song inspired by her, during a concert in New York in August 2024.

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Katie Lee

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Joel met Lee in 2002 when she was visiting New York City for a weekend and went to a rooftop bar. The twosome hit it off and agreed to go out to dinner.

“We had this great dinner, and we had pasta and white truffles, and he was really trying to impress me,” Lee said in a 2008 interview. “I’d say it was love at first bite because we had such a good meal and we both love food, so that was what we bonded over.”

The pair went on to tie the knot in 2004 at Joel’s home in Oyster Bay, New York, where Joel’s daughter Alexa was Katie’s maid of honor. The Food Network chef and Joel eventually called it quits in 2009.

In Joel’s documentary, Lee said their marriage started to fall apart when Joel returned from rehab and she felt a “little bit of resentment” from him that she pushed him to seek treatment in the first place.

“In a lot of ways it was hard to recover from that,” she said. “I don’t think either of us wanted it to not work out, but it just became obvious that it wasn’t working.”

Alexis Roderick

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Roderick and Joel met in 2009 when they were each out with a group of friends at a restaurant in New York. Joel ended up going up to Roderick and getting her number, which led to the twosome hitting it off. The pair married in Long Island, New York, in July 2015.

One month after getting married, Roderick gave birth to her and Joel’s first child together, Della. Two years later, the twosome welcomed daughter Remy in 2017.

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Although the twosome have kept their relationship relatively private throughout the years, Roderick has continued to support her husband’s career, even attending his final show at Madison Square Garden in July 2024, where he dedicated the song “This Is the Time” to her.

“My lovely wife asked me to do that song for you, so this is for Alexis,” he told the crowd.