Comic’s Bride Now a Material Girl

He married a complete stranger in front of a television audience of 23 million, hasn’t spoken to his wife since their “honeymoon,” and she immediately filed for an annulment.

So what do you do if you’re newlywed Rick Rockwell, who shot to infamy on Fox-TV’s “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” when he married emergency-room nurse Darva Conger in February?

You do what you’ve always done as a stand-up comic: You hit the road.

Rockwell’s 13-city “National Annulment Tour” is at the Brea Improv tonight through Saturday.

The 20-year veteran comic, who’s been making club audiences laugh a lot longer with his off-the-wall humor than he’s been making money in real estate, obviously has a lot on his mind these days.

As he told his audience at the Improv in Tempe, Ariz., at the start of his tour March 10, “Why would I marry somebody named Darva Conger? It sounds like an orthopedic problem. . . . What was I thinking? . . . I gave that woman 36 of the best hours of my life and she turned on me.”

So how is Rockwell faring on the road?

“The response has been really good,” Rockwell, 43, said last week from the Comedy Works in Denver. “I think a lot of people are coming to see Waldo, the dog-faced boy from the circus. They’re curious. But then they come and see the show and they’re like, ‘Wow. You’re funnier than we expected.’ This is not Kato Kaelin doing Shakespeare.

“A big part of what we do in comedy is a shared experience. You have to have people relate to you to make them laugh. The interesting thing about this is it sure isn’t contrived. We all shared this together.”

Whether they watched the Feb. 15 “Multi-Millionaire” broadcast, Rockwell’s audiences are proving they’re not only interested in seeing the man who made TV history but are also getting into the act.

Rockwell was surprised the second night of his two nights in Tempe when three women showed up at the club in bridal gowns. He happily posed for pictures, which, not surprisingly, wound up in the National Enquirer.

It turns out it was a setup, but not by Rockwell or the Enquirer.

“A local radio station offered $100 for anybody to have their picture taken with me in a wedding gown,” Rockwell said. “The interesting thing is in Atlanta, there was no solicitation and I had three women show up in wedding gowns there.”

He’s also had women show up with signs that say, “Will marry you for food” or “I’ll marry you, Rick.” And just that morning in Denver, a radio station brought two women in wedding dresses into the studio for a segment with him called “Who Wants to Nag a Multi-Millionaire?”

“It was really funny,” Rockwell said. “I had to ask these women questions, and they had to harangue me on the air.”

It’s easy to see the humor in Rockwell’s tacky TV wedding--and he acknowledges he’s been having fun with it on tour--but the comic said the entire experience “has been an emotional roller coaster.”

Rockwell threads the subject of his television wedding and its highly publicized aftermath throughout his act, which also includes a question-and-answer session with his audience. The most commonly asked question?

“Why Darva?”

Rockwell explained he had developed a questionnaire with the help of a UCLA psychologist who specializes in relationships, “so I’d have some information to go on before the show.” And, he said, Conger’s answers “seemed most closely to align myself to what I was looking for in a spouse. There were some really hot 20-year-olds there, but I went for her because I thought we had the best prescription for success. I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

The comedian insists he was dead serious about finding a wife on the show. He had even converted one of the spare bedrooms in his Encinitas home into a walk-in closet “in anticipation of my wife coming home with me. I remodeled the house and planted flowers outside.”

Of course, many observers figured his decision to get married on TV was just a publicity stunt to promote his comedy career--which is not a stretch for a comedian who has done his share of attention-getting stunts: He earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for “longest continuous comedy routine” by telling jokes for 30 hours and three minutes in 1982. Or, in 1987, he performed in six clubs in five states--all in the same evening.

“The irony here is my wife was the one that did [the show] on a lark,” Rockwell said. When the show’s producers told him they needed to assure the network brass that it indeed was not a publicity stunt on Rockwell’s part, Rockwell said he told them, “First of all, I don’t think it’s funny or cute to say, ‘Ha, ha. I fooled a major network.’

“The second thing is I would never ever in a million years involve someone else on a lark in something that is so personal as being married to someone.”

As he talked, Rockwell frequently referred to Conger as “my wife.”

“Well, you know, she’s married to me right now,” he said, unaware that a Las Vegas judge would grant the annulment Wednesday based on Conger’s testimony that she wasn’t told about her groom’s background before the on-air wedding.

But, as Rockwell said during his interview last week, he feels both he and the show’s producers were “duped.”

“This was real, not a game,” he said. “[The prospective brides] spent five days getting fitted for the wedding dresses. She [Conger] had 15 minutes backstage [after he chose her]; she could have always backed out.

“If I live to be a thousand years old, I’ll never understand my wife.”

Rockwell said he’s received empathy and support from both men and women. But he doesn’t see himself as a victim.

“No, I signed up for it, and this is what came of it.” And, he said, “I didn’t have any idea I was going to get this much great material from this.”

One other thing he didn’t anticipate: an ex-girlfriend coming forward to say she had obtained a restraining order against him a decade ago, alleging he had struck and threatened to kill her. Rockwell has denied the charges.

Even Rockwell’s alleged millionaire status came under attack. But Fox TV, which initially described Rockwell as a “successful, self-made millionaire,” reportedly checked out his finances and later confirmed he’s worth “at least $2 million.”

The comedian said the fallout from the TV show and having “incorrect information disseminated about me” contributed to his decision to do the tour.

“It’s been good to get on the road and let people know I’m for real as opposed to what they’ve read about.”

And what he is, above all, is a comedian.

Noting that Conger had been approached to pose for Playboy, he says: “Quite frankly, I hope she does, because--call me old-fashioned--I’d like to see my wife naked.”

BE THERE

Rick Rockwell, Brea Improv, 945 E. Birch St., 8:30 p.m. today. Also Friday, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.; Saturday, 8 and 10:30 p.m.; Sunday, 8 p.m. $15 to $17. (949) 529-7878.