A Prime (Time) Match

When we first met Darva Conger she was an emergency room nurse who just wanted a little happiness. After pulling long shifts, she didn’t have to be told how hard it is to meet guys, let alone decent guys, rich guys, guys with that certain savoir-faire.

When the Fox network offered her a chance at wealth, love and a bunch of free stuff, Conger jumped. So did Rick Rockwell, who billed himself as a millionaire real estate developer--genuine marriage material--but whose smarminess may just vault him past Joey Buttafuoco.

As nearly everyone alive last Tuesday now knows, Rockwell chose Conger from a flock of 50 competitors for his hand, got her John Hancock on a prenuptial agreement and then married her on Fox’s “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” show--all in two hours.

That was then. This is now: Conger says she regrets the whole deal, is not attracted to Rockwell and entered the contest because she wanted a vacation and a chance to wave to her family on TV. “I don’t think I was thinking clearly,” she said Wednesday. Understatement of the year.

Conger gets to keep the big diamond ring and the other toys she won. And Rockwell? Well, he’s been busy denying reports that he is no multimillionaire and that he threatened an ex-girlfriend in the early 1990s.

“If the right man does not come along,” Letitia Baldrige once wrote, “there are many fates far worse. One is to have the wrong man come along.”

Another is to have a woman decide to marry you for a vacation.

Funny, maybe they deserved each other.