Billy Joel's Messy Love Affair With His Best Friend's Wife, Explained

The following includes references to attempted suicide.

Billy Joel has been married to his wife, Alexis Roderick Joel, since 2015, but he has a long and storied romantic past. Joel was married three times before, and each of those unions came with their own ups and downs. But some of the romantic drama the "Uptown Girl" singer faced happened before he ever walked down the aisle for the first time. For example, Joel admitted to cheating with his best friend's wife very early in his career. 

Back in 1970, Joel was financially strapped and living with his friend and Attila bandmate, Jon Small, and his wife, Elizabeth Small, according to Today. Joel repaid Jon's generosity with betrayal by cheating with Elizabeth. "I fell in love, and we went into a relationship," Joel said of their forbidden love in his "Billy Joel: And So It Goes" documentary in 2025. (via Entertainment Weekly). "I felt very, very guilty about it. They had a child ... I felt like a homewrecker."

Eventually, Jon found out about their relationship and assaulted Joel. "I got punched in the nose, which I deserved," he revealed. "Jon was very upset. I was very upset. And that was the end of Atilla. That was the end of my relationship with Jon for a while," he continued. However, this fight didn't mark the end of Joel's relationship with Elizabeth.

Billy Joel went on to marry Elizabeth in 1973, after she changed her name back to Elizabeth Weber. However, their path towards the altar wasn't exactly linear. You see, after Jon Small found out about the affair, Weber actually ended things with Joel and her husband — and Joel didn't take it well. "I was sleeping in laundromats, and I was depressed, I think, to the point of almost being psychotic," he revealed in "Billy Joel: And So It Goes" (via Entertainment Weekly). Joel then twice attempted to take his own life. However, Jon intervened after the second attempt. "Even though our friendship had blown up, Jon saved my life," said the star.

After a brief stint in a mental health hospital for depression, Joel and Weber found their way back to each other, enjoying a nine-year marriage until 1982. But they didn't have a clean break. In the same documentary, Joel revealed that Weber told him she wanted to end their marriage after he'd gotten into a bad motorcycle accident, despite her insistent warnings about the associated danger. "I would've stayed, I would've been able — like so many women before me — to make that accommodation for someone you love, but there was no way that I could stand by and watch him kill himself," said Joel's first ex wife (via People).

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