Liz Taylor to Marry in October : Nuptials: The actress, wed seven times before, will exchange vows with construction worker Larry Fortensky. Michael Jackson will give her away.

Actress Elizabeth Taylor will take an eighth walk down the aisle, exchanging October wedding vows with her Teamster boyfriend at a private ceremony in which Michael Jackson will give the bride away.

“After being together for four years, Larry and I finally decided we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together,” the 59-year-old Taylor said in a statement released Friday by her publicist.

The groom is Larry Fortensky, 39, who met Taylor during their treatment at the Betty Ford Clinic drug abuse center in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Fortensky, who is divorced, is a Teamsters union member and a construction worker.

“Life is good and sweet and we love each other and each day as it comes, and want to share our happiness with family and friends,” Taylor said. “I always said I would get married one more time and with God’s blessings, this is it, forever.”

The couple will marry Oct. 5 in a private ceremony. The wedding will take place at Jackson’s Santa Ynez Valley estate, 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Chen Sam, Taylor’s publicist, said Jackson will give the actress away. “It is true,” Jackson spokesman Bob Jones said.

Taylor, who won Academy Awards for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Butterfield 8,” has been married seven times, twice to the late actor Richard Burton.

The Taylor-Fortensky romance apparently flourished when the actress was hospitalized and near death with pneumonia last year. Fortensky was a constant companion during her six-week hospitalization.

Taylor was 19 when she married Conrad Nicholson (Nicky) Hilton, on May 6, 1950, in an event hailed as the Hollywood social event of the year.

After divorcing Hilton, she married actor Michael Wilding, then Michael Todd, Eddie Fisher and Burton. She and Burton divorced in 1974, then remarried in 1975 and divorced again the same year.

In 1976, she married Virginian John W. Warner and helped his successful campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1978. They were divorced in 1982.

Taylor’s romances during the 1980s have kept the tabloids busy but have not reached the proportions of her earlier ones. She was engaged to New York businessman Dennis Stein and Mexican lawyer Victor Luna. She was rumored to have been engaged to the late publisher Malcolm Forbes, but both said their relationship was platonic.