Where's My Teeth: Billy Joel Splits from Wife Katie Lee – Are You Really Surprised?
June 20, 2009 – If there ever was a mismatched pair, physically and intellectually, it was Billy Joel and his young wife Katie Lee. Now comes word of the inevitable, the couple are splitting up.

Their Oprah interview a few years ago was impossible to watch in a “Stepford Wives” creepy kind of way. Billy’s young little prize made Mary Hart’s perkiness seem positively dull. Here was Billy Joel, a music superstar, who had a reputation for telling it like it is, he never suffered fools and he was married to someone more annoying than Celine Dion on a good day. What gives? To make things worse in front of millions of viewers Katie tried to make us believe that she never knew who Billy Joel was or heard any of his songs before they met. Either way she came off like an idiot with that statement. Was she culturally inept? Remember Joel has the 6th biggest selling album of all time, or was Katie just out-right lying and digging for gold and fame. The latter is the theme of most of the internet chat rooms today. It is reported however that the couple had set up a pre-nuptial agreement.

The whole thing has been a mess from the start, Joel is 60 and Katie Lee is only 27. What was a gorgeous young thing like that doing with a guy who looked like a Buick? Their bond had that “Your dad’s on top of you” theme running all the way through it. Can you imagine being a fly on the wall when these two tried to have a conversation? Poor Billy went into this relationship with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel! As Joseph Collins once said, “The chief reason why marriage is rarely a success is that it is contracted while the partners are insane.” Billy was enveloped by lust and Katie liked how her husband’s fat wallet made him look like SpongeBob SquarePants.

I married a woman who is 10 ½ years younger than me but, in the end, we eat the same dirt. We come from the same place and even though she’s gorgeous and I look like a shoe she certainly didn’t marry me for money. I’m a broadcaster, how much money could I possible have?

Being lop-sided in love goes further than looking like a young girl with her grandfather, which they did, but also being cut from the same cloth or some reasonable hand drawn facsimile. Did these two have anything in common? On Oprah Katie Lee said she was mature for her age and Billy “has this job that’s allowed him to be really immature for a long time - rock star.” You know a couple’s grasping when they pull out that old cliché; it usually always means sugar-daddy!

In a statement, the pair said that they remain "caring friends with admiration and respect for each other." Blah, blah, blah. Wasn’t it just a few months ago that Katie Lee was hanging on the arm of Yigal Azrouel, a handsome 36-year-old Israeli-born fashion designer? Some folks say that Azrouel referred to her as "my girlfriend."

The thing is, when Joel hooked up with Katie Lee there weren’t any “Joe-Lunch-bucket” guys working in a Chevy plant in Mansfield, Ohio saying, “If Billy can do it maybe I can find me a sweet young thing who doesn’t think I look like an endangered elephant.”

It’s almost always the rich powerful guys who, even though they look silly, get the hot perfect young chicks. It’s this little dance that happens, this unwritten rule or agreement these couples make. I doubt if most aging rockers even dare ask themselves why someone who was selling Girl Guide cookies a few years ago would want to play with their Billy-Bob-Ray when the lights go out.

A friend of the couple said, "It was really the age difference that caught up with them, they grew apart." Were they ever living in the same galaxy? Katie wasn’t even born when Joel recorded his first album.

The Piano Man’s daughter Alexa Ray Joel, who’s younger than Katie but actually looks and acts older, said, “I'm just supporting him right now." Adding, "I have a pretty good women's intuition so I could tell.”

Her mother Christie Brinkley, who was married to Joel from 1985 to 1994 told Extra, "I'm very sad that this has happened and I wish them both happiness... he's a wonderful father to Alexa. We've remained friends. We've been friends for many, many years, so obviously I'm very sad that this has happened and I wish them both happiness."

I love Billy Joel; he helped to re-wire me in high school. His music helped me survive my own “dark nights of the soul” but when the dust settles he’s just a guy who, by the sounds of it, drinks too much and is looking for someone who “gets him.” Marrying a then 23 year old, no matter how beautiful, was probably a huge act of self sabotage or maybe he just wanted to feel young. Really I don’t know and I doubt if he does right now but it’s not how you fall down that counts, its how you get up. I want the latter for him.

I hope Billy Joel asks himself “What the fuck was I thinking?” His self preservation needs to invite that lesson/thought in real deep. I like my heroes, I defended Elton John for years just like I would a family member but when I saw Billy’s wedding in 2004 I had to disengage from the whole thing. It was just too bizarre. Now it’s finally over. Who knows it may serve as his muse to record new music again. – by John Beaudin