In her new memoir, “Uptown Girl,” Christie Brinkley reveals that she was “so stunned” to discover that her then-husband Peter Cook was having an affair in 2006.
Brinkley — who tied the knot with Cook in 1996 — explains that her relationship with Cook was “the most tortured relationship” she ever had, noting that she discovered Cook’s affair in June 2006 when she gave the commencement address for Southampton High School.
After delivering her remarks, she stepped to the side of the stage in front of the curtains. She writes that a man tapped her on the shoulder from behind the curtains. As he leaned in closer to her, Brinkley writes that he said, “I need to tell you that that arrogant husband of yours has been having an affair with my teenage daughter, and he won’t knock it off.”
Immediately, Brinkley explains that she could not move.
“I was so stunned that I froze,” she wrote. “Immediately, I glanced into the audience, scanning the front row for Peter, who was sitting there with Jack (their son), and as soon as I saw him, Peter’s eyes were already trained on my face, as he began shaking his head ‘no’ and mouthing the word silently at the same time. He knew. Peter knew.”
Brinkley writes that she turned back to the man — who offered to tell her more information at a later time — and asked him to repeat what he said, to which he clarified that Cook was having an affair with his 18-year-old daughter.
“I knew from Peter’s face that he was guilty, and in that moment, I thought I was going to pass out onstage, in front of hundreds of people,” Brinkley writes. “I also felt tears began to well in my eyes, and I bent down to pretend to retie the ribbons of my espadrilles around my ankles so I wouldn’t faint or start sobbing onstage.”
Brinkley says that as soon as she was out of the kids earshot, she told Peter to “pack a bag and leave” before embarking on a journey to uncover more information about the situation from the man, who turned out to be a police officer.
“When your whole world falls apart and you realize in a heartbeat you’ve suddenly become the cliché middle-aged woman whose husband is having an affair with a much (much) younger woman, what do you do? You call your best friends,” Brinkley writes.
And that’s what she did, ringing up her friends Jill and Mindy who helped her search their family computer where they found, she writes, “a panoply of frightening email exchanges, incriminating photos and porn accounts.”
As she printed out the proof of Cook’s affair, Brinkley says she and her friends began laughing.
“One thing I’ve learned in life is that you always have to be able to laugh, no matter how bad things become,” Brinkley writes.
For the next month, Brinkley worked on collecting evidence and working quietly on the what she explains became a “very nasty (and very public) divorce.” But to the world, she told everyone Cook was away on business and acted as if all was normal for her kids’ sake and to helm public gossip.
“On the inside, I felt shattered, but on the outside, I still wore a pretty party dress and smiled so widely it hurt, greeting all our guests and telling everyone, including my kids, that Peter was still away on business,” Brinkley recalls, noting it was the “greatest acting job” of her career yet.
But when the news broke about Cook’s affairs with multiple teenage girls, Brinkley writes that “the paparazzi followed me around like a wagon train, and after a day or two, I realized I had become a prisoner in my own home yet again.”
What followed was a six-year long court battle between the two in which Brinkley publicly called Cook a narcissist, which she writes inspired others moms to leave their own narcissistic husbands.
In 2012, Cook went on TODAY to defend himself after Brinkley spoke to the show earlier that same week about their marriage, noting that Cook had been trying to ruin her through “character assassination” and saying anytime she has joy or success, Cook tries to destroy it. He admitted he’s a narcissist, saying it “makes you focus attention on something” which helped him be a better dad. He also claimed that Brinkley lied about “virtually everything” she said on the show.
“The entire content of her interview was a lie where she claims that I am harassing and bullying her on a daily basis,” he said on TODAY in 2012, noting that they hadn’t spoken in four years and claiming she was employing “crocodile tears” on the show when she broke down. “So this perception that I am harassing and bullying her is, is nonsense.”
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