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Brinkley Gives Intimate, Sob-Wracked Testimony

Supermodel Recalls Learning Of Estranged Husband's Tryst With Teenager From Young Woman's Stepfather

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (CBS) ― Former supermodel Christie Brinkley took the stand Thursday in her bitter divorce battle with her estranged husband Peter Cook.

Brinkley arrived at the Suffolk County courthouse, saying she felt well-rested and ready to tell her side of the story.

On the second day of the now very public trial, more dirty punches were thrown with more stunning revelations coming minute-by-minute.

Brinkley, 54, and Cook, 49, never looked at each other Thursday as she was first questioned, gently, by her own lawyer, Robert Cohen. Her voice was quiet, but her jaw was clenched.

Cohen walked her at first through easy questions just to get her going. One of those questions had her name her children, but Brinkley stumbled on Alexa Ray, her daughter with Billy Joel. She immediately apologized to the court:

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so nervous."

Christie Brinkley: Then & Now

Soon enough, Cohen brought his client to why they were all there in the first place: Cook's affair with the teenage Diana Bianchi. Referring to the commencement speech Brinkley gave at Southampton High School, and the minutes before Bianchi's stepfather confronted her about the affair, Brinkley said, "I was really excited about preparing my speech sending these young people out into the world. And that was also the day my world was completely shattered."

One could hear a pin drop in the courtroom.

Brinkley said Bianchi's stepfather, Brian Platt, told her, "'He's having an affair with my daughter'. I asked him, 'What did you say?' but my eyes were fading out in like tunnelvision," she said.

Then for the first time, Brinkley looked at her husband in the courtroom.

"I looked at Peter and I knew it was true. And my knees were going to buckle and I saw little Jack's face. And I looked from Jack to the man, and I felt like I was going to pass out," she recalled.

Then, in a whisper, she told the courtroom, "I looked at Peter and said, 'How could you?'"

Brinkley said she told Cook to give her his computer passwords "if you've got nothing to hide." She found e-mails there from Bianchi and the porn sites Cook visited.

"I know a lot of men look" at pornographic sites, she said. But, in Cook's case, she said he was trying "to connect with people" in their neighborhood.

"It was not a voyeur site. It was a meeting site," she said. "It was more than I could bear."

Before learning of the affair, Brinkley said the biggest problem she perceived in their marriage was Cook's relationship with Alexa Ray Joel, her daughter with "Piano Man' Billy Joel.

Brinkley said Cook constantly picked on her 22-year-old daughter for the slightest things. "It was truly the area that pained me in our marriage," she said.

It distressed her, too, that Cook didn't want Alexa Joel to play the piano, especially since "I feel as though she's made my life a musical."

"You married me and my children," she said she would tell Cook. "You've got to find a way to love Alexa."

Joel testified that Cook treated her well before he married her mother, but was constantly on her case afterward.

At Brinkley's request, the trial is being held in the public eye, an apparent attempt to embarrass Cook, a Hamptons architect, and her soon-to-be fourth ex-husband.

Cook was grilled Wednesday about his affair with the then-18-year-old Bianchi, and more than $300,000 in payoffs to her.

Cook broke down in tears as he described the un-raveling of his marriage. "My son told me, Mommy's looking at naked pictures of your girlfriends on the computer."

Cook's lawyer told the judge, "We're here because of the self-indulgent wrath of a woman scorned."

However, Brinkley's mood brightened slightly when her cross examiner tried to portray her testimony as acting.

"If you want to call me an actress, that's fine. I'm no Meryl Streep, but I have been in a very successful movie," she said with a sheepish smile while referring to "National Lampoon's Vacation.

"Thirty years later it's still got legs," she said.

Cook and Brinkley are primarily disputing custody of their two children.

Ownership of Brinkley's $30 million Bridgehampton home is not being contested because the couple had a prenuptial agreement.

(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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