Who Wants to Marry a Multi-MillionaireWinner Breaks Silence About 'Irresponsible' Reality Show Scandal, 25 Years Later (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

‘Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire’ winner Darva Conger in 2000, and in 2025.Photo:Fox / Courtesy: Everett Collection; Darva Arellano/Instagram

Fox / Courtesy: Everett Collection; Darva Arellano/Instagram

Darva Conger’s life now looks decidedly different than what it did 25 years ago, when she was on the cover of magazines and newspapers worldwide after winning thereality showWho Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire.

The two-hour special, which earned 23 million viewers, ended up in scandal when it was revealed the groom, real estate developer Rick Rockwell, had a restraining order out against him. Conger, now a mom of one and a nurse anesthetist, recalls those days in detail.

“I was working at a new hospital in Southern California and had recently broken up with a boyfriend,” Conger, a military veteran who was working as an ER nurse, tells PEOPLE. A doctor mentioned a producer friend was casting for the reality show, and the nurses were all talking about it.

“You should do it!” one of them told Conger, then 33.

“I looked at her and said, ‘I’m not doing that! It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of!’ " Conger, now 59, says. But after some cajoling, she agreed to give her number to the producers and was chosen to be a contestant.

“I was just interested in the free week in Vegas,” she says with a laugh. “I didn’t think it was going to be real. I thought it would be a set-up. People would laugh at it for a few minutes, and nothing would come of it.”

What happened next would throw Conger’s life into a tailspin. Fifty contestants vied for Rockwell’s $35,000 diamond ring, and he chose Conger, marrying her on the spot in front of 1,000 audience members for a taped special that would air on Fox on Feb. 15, 2000.

Darva Conger and Rick Rockwell in 2000 on ‘Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire’.Fox / Courtesy: Everett Collection

Fox / Courtesy: Everett Collection

“I was just shell-shocked,” Conger says of winning, but notes that things immediately got weird.

“Rick was just odd from the beginning,” she says. “I assumed it was because we’d been thrown together in this strange circumstance, and figured okay, I can fix this later, let’s just go through with it. But then they whisked us away to a hotel and put us in a hotel room together. And that man came out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel. All I can say is thank goodness it was me, a 33-year-old military veteran, and not a younger, more impressionable girl.” She adds, “It was so irresponsible of them.”

Conger says she wanted an immediateannulment.

“I made it clear to producers, like, ‘Hey, I’m not into this. I thought it was going to be a silly game show. My bad.’ "

Conger agreed to go on a cruise with Rockwell for their “honeymoon,” as long as they sent a chaperone and put them in separate bedrooms.

Darva Conger on Instagram.Darva Arellano/Instagram

Darva Arellano/Instagram

She says they didn’t interact at all on the boat.

“I tried to be nice, but … it was uncomfortable,” she says. “So there we are on the ship, and then show aired. In the morning, I saw the cover of theNew York Times— 23 million people watched this show. That’s when I thought, ‘Oh this could get crazy.’ "

She still didn’t realizehowcrazy.

“We taped an interview after the cruise saying that we were just friends, no romance was there, but it was a great experience. Then, two days later, the stuff about him having a restraining order came out. When I got home to my townhouse, there were media trucks and paparazzi as far as the eye could see. I was just shocked.”

(In a February 2000 interview withDateline,Rockwell dismissed the restraining order as the result of “two very passionate individuals that acted in a bit of an immature, tit-for-tat way.")

Olga Korbut and Darva Conger spar in ‘Celebrity Boxing’ in 2002.Olga Korbut and Darva Conger: Jamie Trueblood/FOX.

Everyone wanted to talk to Conger about her experience. The media hounded her day and night. “They followed me everywhere. I thought, if I don’t talk, maybe they’ll go away. They didn’t.”

She eventually agreed to sit down with Diane Sawyer and share her story onGood Morning America, and recalls the two of them chatting and Sawyer saying, “Oh you’re not a gold-digger at all!”

“And I wasn’t. I owned my own home, I was a veteran, and had a good job,” she says. “But after that, I couldn’t even go back to work because the media were all over the hospital.”

Darva Conger and Rick Rockwell on ‘Larry King Live’ in 2001.Reed Saxon/AP Photo

Reed Saxon/AP Photo

Unsure of what to do next, she received an offer fromPlayboy.

“I’d always lovedPlayboy. I thought it was cool,” she says. “I’m not a fan of weird porn that objectifies women but I have zero issues with the human body. And I was actually really flattered they wanted me. And honestly, it saved me financially. I got offered a few other things, likeCelebrity Boxing,which was fun and easy and paid well. It let me put some money aside, and pay for my real wedding and honeymoon, but I knew I wasn’t going to be doing this forever.”

Conger eventually moved to Northern California, got married and had a son, and put herself through a competitive nurse anesthetist program.

“Now I’m just working, raising my son, doing my woodworking on the side, and living a really comfy, laid-back life,” she says of how different things are now. “But it was crazy back then, having to defend myself against all the names I was called. A whore. A gold-digger.”

So, does she regret going on the show?

“There’s not even a point to wondering about that,” she says. “I did it, and I had some dark times, but I also had some really fun times. I got to go to the Playboy mansion with my friends and it was so fun. I wouldn’t have my son, who is the light of my life. I wouldn’t have some of the experiences I had.”

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She adds, “The I only regret I have was that I wasn’t myself. I never took s— from anyone my whole life, but I was trying to be nice and prim and proper. If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t tolerate people being abrasive to me.”

source: people.com