Posted on Fox News: Dear Readers,
When I awoke yesterday to stories that Christie Brinkley's hubby had cheated on her with a 19-year-old, I thought I'd entered Rocky and Bullwinkle's Way Back machine.
That's because exactly 10 years ago I wrote a similar story about architect Peter Cook. He was 37 years old at the time and newly engaged to Brinkley.
I had the ignominious distinction of breaking the news that throughout the spring of 1996, whilst courting Brinkley, Cook was seriously dating a beautiful 19-year-old singer named Samantha Cole [pictured]. She was from Southampton, N.Y., and her mother worked at the local police station. Neither she nor Christie knew anything about each other.
Twice that spring, Cook went to Los Angeles and asked Cole to marry him. The now 29-year-old model and singer refreshed my memory yesterday.
"Back then you were the only one who wrote about what happened," she said. We had to laugh, as we were both in shock when we picked up the morning papers.
"Peter asked me to marry him in May, and in June he was engaged to Christie," Samantha said. "Neither one of us knew about the other. I was very hurt ... she met him when he was on the outs with me."
Cole says that in the last couple of days Cook called her to say there would be renewed interest in their relationship, thanks to the new scandal. The similarities are striking: the new girl, Diana Bianchi, is 19, and her father is a cop in the very same police station. She was his assistant.
"He always liked younger women," Samantha recalled. "When I met him, he'd just broken off an engagement to a woman about eight years younger. And there was another woman he dated in between us for a short time."
Cole's parents were just as unhappy at the time about her relationship with an older man. But unlike the new girl's father, they felt there was little they could do about it.
As with Bianchi, Samantha started out as Cook's assistant and worked her way up. The couple met on a boat owned by millionaire David Feld. Unlike with Bianchi, Cook was unmarried and had no children. With Brinkley, he has a daughter and a stepson, not to mention an older stepdaughter, Alexa Ray Joel, Brinkley's daughter by Billy Joel.
But there's one thing Cook does not have to worry about: Cole cashing in on his distress. She gave quick interviews to both People and the National Enquirer yesterday, but other that, she's done. She had already planned to be part of a celebrity golf tournament this weekend at Mohegan Sun casino, and she's busy with her singing career.
Does she have advice for Bianchi for life after Peter Cook?
"All I can say is, I was pretty upset with him at the time," she said. "But I got over it, and we became friends again."
