Billy Joel’s Ex-Wife Gave Him An ‘Ultimatum’ to Go to Rehab Before Their Divorce

In his new two-part documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes on HBO Max, the “Uptown Girl” singer recalled getting treatment for alcohol abuse at the Betty Ford Center in 2005.

It was only after his wife at the time — chef and cookbook author Katie Lee — gave him an “ultimatum.”

“‘Either you do something about your drinking or this isn’t gonna work out,'” he recalled her saying.

After Joel returned home from rehab, unfortunately, their marriage was in a “very fragile” state.

“She became very career-oriented and she wanted to be in the city — she wanted to socialize,” he recalled in the doc. “There’s a theory that she was having an affair with some guy. That’s a bunch of bulls—. We just drifted apart from each other.”

He also added that he wasn’t “doing well.”

The pair had a substantial age difference at the time they got married; she was 23 while the singer was 55. Lee admitted that the age difference became a factor in going their separate ways.

“I wanted to be doing all of the things together, but I think that’s where our age came into play,” she confessed. “Also, I think that there was maybe always a little resentment that I had really pushed him to go to Betty Ford.”

Lee also recalled the moment the pair first discussed getting a divorce.

“I don’t think either one of us wanted it to not work out, but it just became obvious that it wasn’t working,” she said. “And I remember one night we had dinner and I said, ‘Bill, I’m unhappy.’ And he said, ‘Do you wanna get a divorce?’ And I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Okay.’ And that was it.”

The couple ultimately went their separate ways in 2009 after five years of marriage. 

Lee wasn’t the only person who voiced their concern for the “Piano Man” singer’s health.

In the second installment of the HBO documentary, the five-time Grammy winner opened up about Elton John making a comment about his drinking in a 2011 Rolling Stone cover story. 

“Elton had made a comment that he thought I needed real rehab,” Joel recalled. “He trucked it up to, ‘Oh, he’s a drunk.’ And that really hurt me. I said, ‘Wait a minute, don’t you know me better than that?'”

“And there was bad blood for a little while,” he admitted about his relationship with John.

John’s comments compared his own time in rehab to Joel’s stints, calling Joel’s “light.”

“He’s going to hate me for this, but every time he goes to rehab they’ve been light,” John told the outlet at the time. “When I went to rehab, I had to clean the floors. He goes to rehab where they have TVs.”

Christie Brinkley — another ex-wife of Joel — has previously shared her experiences with Joel’s drinking in her memoir, Uptown Girl.

Read more about it here.