Former supermodel Christie Brinkley came face to face with the 21-year-old who had an affair with her husband on the opening day of the couple’s bitter divorce trial. Brinkley’s estranged husband Peter Cook, 49, and his former lover Diana Bianchi, 21, both spoke about their brief affair during the public trial in a Long Island, New York court.
Miss Bianchi was 18 and working as Mr Cook’s personal assistant at his architectural practice when the affair happened. He met her in early 2005 when she was 18 and working at a toy store. Their affair began that March, around the time he hired her. She was paid a salary of around 20,000 to type magazine articles on to the company’s website. He also left her cash payments in various spots - 500 dollars under the rock outside his office, more behind a painting, and gave her $16,500 to help her purchase a car. Before their relationship ended in late 2005, they had sex in the office a number of times, and at homes in the Hamptons owned by Miss Brinkley.
Testifying in court yesterday, Miss Bianchi said: ‘He had shown interest in me, and I reciprocated. In his office he asked me how I would feel if he told me that he was attracted to me and that’s really how it all started. ‘I think I was a little taken aback, but I wasn’t against it either really. I wouldn’t say that one of us pushed the other. I would say that it was a mutual thing.’ Cook said their affair lasted ‘less than a year’ and he recalled they had sex about 12 times in various locations. The affair was revealed when Miss Bianchi’s stepfather, a policeman, confronted Cook and accused him of taking advantage of the teenager. The fling stunned Long Island society, of which Miss Brinkley, 54, is a leading light.
She filed for divorce two years ago as it emerged that Cook had paid Miss Bianchi $300,000 ’shut-up’ money. Miss Brinkley also intends to call as a witness a married woman who left her husband for Cook and was then dumped by him. During opening arguments at Central Islip Court on New York’s Long Island, Miss Brinkley’s lawyer Stephen Cohen said Cook visited websites devoted to sexual swingers - using their 12-year-old son Jack’s name. Jack is Miss Brinkley’s son from her third marriage, to property developer Richard Taubma. Cook, her fourth husband, adopted Jack shortly after they wed in 1996.
