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Christie Brinkley and Cook lasted 10 years before his Diana Bianchi affair.
Christie Brinkley is pulling the plug on her marriage to fourth husband Peter Cook, preparing to file divorce papers against the amorous architect who broke her supermodel heart by cheating with an 18-year-old aspiring singer, The Post has learned.
Brinkley's high-powered divorce lawyer, Eleanor Alter, has told Cook's lawyer, Norman Sheresky, to expect the legal papers that will set their split into motion, sources said yesterday.
The move comes three months after Brinkley was stunned to learn that Cook, 47, had cavorted over the past year with teen temptress Diana Bianchi, who worked at his Hamptons architectural firm.
It also sets the stage for a possible war over the estimated $60 million in real estate the couple jointly own.
"No comment," said Cook when a reporter caught up with him in Midtown yesterday afternoon and asked his reaction to the planned divorce. "I don't comment on my family life, thank you."
Last month, the 52-year-old Brinkley filed a "summons with notice" in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead that laid the groundwork for a divorce from the caddish Cook.
But the "Uptown Girl" held off serving divorce papers on Cook, with whom she has an 8-year-old daughter, Sailor Lee. Cook also is the adoptive father of her 11-year-old son, Jack Paris.
In late July, Cook tried to convince the legendary model not to call it quits on their decade-long marriage, telling The Post through his matrimonial lawyer, "I love my wife. I have loved her since the day I met her. . . . For a lifetime I've tried to prove how much I love her."
"This is an aberration," Cook said then. "I'm sorry. I'm contrite. I'm stupid. Foolish. No excuse."
Cook's lawyer, Sheresky, added at that time, "He hopes there's no divorce."
"If she wants one - and he certainly hopes this doesn't happen, but if - it will not be nasty. She can have whatever she wants."
Before this summer, Brinkley and Cook had what seemed to be a fairy-tale marriage, and were considered one of the Hamptons' power couples.
But in June, Diana Bianchi's police-officer stepfather confronted Brinkley at a high school graduation in the Hamptons and told her how Cook had been having an affair with the now-19-year-old singer. Cook had met Bianchi a year and a half before, when she was working as a clerk at a toy store where he was shopping for his kids.
With the bust-up of her latest marriage, Brinkley risks heading into Elizabeth Taylor territory if she weds again.
Brinkley's first marriage, to artist Jean-François Allaux, ended in divorce after eight years in 1981. Her second marriage, to singer Billy Joel, lasted one year longer but also ended in divorce, in 1994.
Brinkley split with developer Richard Taubman in 1995 after less than a year together, and married Cook the following year.
Additional reporting by Dan Kadison
dan.mangan@nypost.com
Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
