Who Is Billy Joel’s Spouse? All About The Singer’s Four Marriages

Billy Joel is one of the most successful singer-songwriters on the planet. Over the course of his five-decade career, the 71-year-old performer has released 13 studio albums, won five Grammy Awards, and sold more than 150 million records worldwide. He’s also had a headline-making personal life that’s included multiple car accidents, two stints in rehab, and four marriages. How much do you know about Billy Joel’s spouses? Here, we take a look at the pop star’s wives.

It appears as though the fourth’s time the charm for Billy Joel when it comes to wedded bliss. In 2015, the Piano Man singer married his current wife, Alexis Roderick, during a surprise Fourth of July ceremony at his palatial Long Island estate. The wedding was presided over by New York State governor Andrew Cuomo, a longtime friend of Joel’s.

Roderick, who is 33 years younger than Joel, was a 29-year-old senior risk officer at Morgan Stanley when she began dating “Vienna” crooner in 2009. She’s also an accomplished equestrian who loves riding horses on the five-acre Florida ranch Joel purchased for her in 2018.

Roderick was pregnant when she married Joel and gave birth to their daughter Della Rose Joel on August 12, 2015. Despite being 66 years old at the time, Joel said he was thrilled to become a late-in-life father.

“I’m gonna spend a lot of time with this kid,” he told Newsday in 2015. “I was thinking about that. I’m probably going to be able to spend more time with this kid than most people are able to spend with their children, because I don’t have a regular job. I could be a stay-at-home dad for as long as I can stay alive.”

Two years later, on October 22, 2017, the couple welcomed a second daughter into the world, Remy Anne Joel.

While Joel has clearly found his soul mate in Roderick, she’s not the only woman he’s been married to. The “Uptown Girl” singer has three ex-wives: Elizabeth Weber, Christie Brinkley, and Katie Lee.

Billy Joel and Elizabeth Weber had a long and dramatic relationship. The couple met in 1970 when Joel was still a struggling singer trying to make ends meet. “She wasn’t like a lot of the other girls I knew at that time who had taken home ec and cooking classes,” he said in the book Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography. “She was .?.?. intelligent and not afraid to speak her mind, but could also be seductive. Almost like a European-type — not a typical American girl.”

Unfortunately, Weber was married to one of Billy Joel’s friends and bandmates. Joel and Weber ended up having an affair, but when Weber’s husband found out, she decided to leave both men. The breakup left Joel so heartbroken and depressed, he attempted suicide. Weber found him and rushed him to the hospital.

“The next thing I remember, I woke up in the hospital and learned that they had pumped my stomach,” Joel told Fred Schruers in his book,  Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography. “I thought to myself, ‘Oh, great, I couldn’t even do this right.’ It was another failure.”

Joel and Weber rekindled their romance and got married in 1973. Business-savvy and ambitious, Weber became Joel’s manager and helped him hit it big. She was also the inspiration for some of his most famous songs, including “Just the Way You Are,” “She’s Got a Way,” “She’s Always a Woman,” and “The Stranger.”

The couple stayed married until Weber filed for divorce in 1982. Reportedly, Weber was entitled to 50 percent of her husband’s earnings, plus an additional cut as his manager. Needless to say, the split cost Joel some serious cash.

In the 1980s, Christie Brinkley was one of the world’s biggest supermodels, alongside women like Brooke Shields, Iman, Cindy Crawford, and Elle Macpherson. She met Billy Joel in 1983 while vacationing in the Caribbean and the couple married two years later. Together, they became one of the hottest—and unlikely—celebrity couples of the decade.

“What bothers me is when because of what she looks like and what she does for a living, people fall back on the stereotype of her as being a dumb blonde – which she definitely is not,” Joel told Rolling Stone in 1990. “They say ‘supermodel’ like that’s supposed to mean she’s vapid and shallow – which she’s not.”

Brinkley famously inspired the lyric’s for Billy Joel’s 1983 “Uptown Girl” and even appeared in the video for the song. In 1985, the couple had a daughter, Alexa Ray—Joel’s first child. Now 35, Alexa is an accomplished singer-songwriter in her own right.

After nine years of marriage, Brinkley and Joel divorced in 1994. Reportedly, there were many reasons for the split, including the fact that Joel was always on tour and Brinkley wanted a tighter, closer-knit family. Despite the breakup, the pair remained on relatively good terms and are still friends to this day.

“Many years after our divorce, Billy would still come to my house for the Christmas singalong and play the piano, and all our friends would come over and sing Christmas carols,” Brinkley told People in 2019. “Singalongs are one of my favorite things to do. And you know that’s what makes everybody happy.”

Brinkley even congratulated Joel on his marriage to Alexis Roderick in 2015, writing on Instagram: “Congratulation to the glowing bride and groom.. And to my daughter Alexa, who has a wonderful friend in Alexis! Wishing the growing family every happiness! “

Katie Lee was a college student at Miami University in Ohio when she met Billy Joel. The journalism major was not a fan of the Storm Front singer at the time, telling New York Magazine: “My mom played a lot of Fleetwood Mac, James Taylor, and the Rolling Stones, but I didn’t know much of Billy’s music,” she recalls. “After we met, I went out and bought his Greatest Hits because I thought I should know what he did.”

The pair started dating and got married just one year later, in 2004. Over the next few years, Katie carved out a successful career for herself as a cookbook author, food and lifestyle writer, and occasional TV show host. In 2009, the pair split, releasing the following statement about the end of their marriage:

“After nearly five years of marriage, Billy Joel and Katie Lee Joel have decided to separate. This decision is a result of much thoughtful consideration. Billy and Katie remain caring friends with admiration and respect for each other,” the couple said in a statement.

Despite the breakup, Lee and Joel have remained on good terms. In fact, in 2017, she posted a sweet tribute to her former husband on Instagram:

“Truly in awe of my former husband @billyjoel wearing the yellow Star of David at his concert at MSG last night. He is an incredible man and what a way to take a stand. He continues to inspire me and I hope he does to each and every one of you.”