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How Billy Joel planned to surprise wife with Sagaponack house

BY LAURA MANN | laura.mann@newsday.com

2:57 PM EDT, August 16, 2007

As a young girl, Katie Lee Joel always dreamed of having a home on the ocean. This summer, husband Billy Joel made that dream come true, buying actor Roy Scheider's five bedroom waterfront home in Sagaponack for her for almost $17 million.

"He bought it without my knowing! I don't know how he pulled it off, because I'm so nosy," she tells Hamptons magazine in its latest issue, which hits newsstands Friday.

She says Joel planned on pulling up to the house in the car, handing her the keys and saying, "This is yours," but he was so excited about the purchase that he told her. "He just did it out of the blue," she says.

The Hamptons locale reminds her of her native West Virginia. "One of the reasons I feel so comfortable in Sagaponack is that the rural atmosphere is very much like home."

Joel, who hosted the first season of Bravo's "Top Chef," is working on a new cookbook, due out next May. She tells the magazine that when she and husband Billy are out East, they enjoy hitting the local farmstands. When not trying out new recipes on her husband, Joel says she enjoys patronizing local restaurants like Della Femina in East Hampton, Trata East in Water Mill, and the Dockside in Sag Harbor.

They also like to entertain at home. "There's something about having people in my home and feeding them that feels so good to me. It's very natural," she explains.

The Joels also own homes on Centre Island, in Sag Harbor, in Manhattan and Miami. Their Centre Island estate, a 14,000-square-foot, five-bedroom mansion on 14.26 acres is currently on the market for $32.5 million with Daniel Gale Sotheby's International Realty.

And apparently there's no need for an intercom system in any of these rambling homes: Joel always knows how to locate her husband, she says. "He whistles all the time. I always know where he is in the house because I hear the whistling."

The Hamptons magazine photos of Joel were taken at a bed and breakfast called the Seatuck Cove House in Eastport, not her new home.